Terminal Server License Expired!

[onechewy]

We have a Windows Server 2003 machine which we installed a few months back. It’s being used as a SQL Application server. Terminal Server was installed on it and the warnings about licenses expiring have pretty much gone ignored up until today when I discovered that the license has indeed expired and I can no longer remotely log in.

Myself and one other person are the only two who remote login and we both use Administrator logon credentials, so Administrator Remote Login would be okay for us as that allows for two remote connections plus the console login.

It says in the Terminal Services Configuration page on the local machine that you can change to Administrator Remote Login via the Add/Remove programs console but the only thing I can do there is uninstall Terminal Server and then I get a warning that any programs installed after Terminal Server was installed, won’t work properly… A lot of stuff has been installed and configured over the past couple of months so Terminal Server is going to have to stay where it is I guess.. but I really need to be able to log on remotely.

Has anyone any ideas how I might be able to fix this..? Ta.

[djaburg]

Basically you've installed the full terminal service as opposed to configuring it for remote administration only. Either you need to remove the terminal server service and then reinstall it for remote administration only, or you may need to get some terminal server CAL's (typically sold in 5 packs only for about $500 US), but I'm not sure what the cost would be in Euro. Not sure what applications wouldn't work correctly if you make the change, but if you're only installing application as administrator, then I would "think" that all should be OK. Are you running your remote desktop icon as /console? When I'm remotely administering servers, I use the command:
%SystemRoot%\System32\mstsc.exe /console

instead of the default:

%SystemRoot%\System32\mstsc.exe

That will emulate the console environment correctly as opposed to creating an additional administrator session.

If you've installed your applications using the add/remove programs icon, then everything should be OK.