Cannot Connect to a Terminal Server from a Windows-Based Terminal

When you try use a Terminal Services client to connect to a terminal server, you may not be able to do so. If you wait for several hours (up to 24, in some cases), you may again be able to connect, but you may again experience this symptom later.

You may also see the following event in the application log:

Event ID 1004
Source: TermService
Description: The Terminal Server cannot issue a client license.

This issue may occur if you connect to the terminal server from a Windows-based terminal (WBT) device, such as a Microsoft Windows CE-based WBT or any other WBT whose operating system is recognized by Windows Terminal Services as "other". This issue occurs if all the following conditions exist:

• The WBT client has been issued a permanent license, but that license has expired.
• The Terminal Services licensing thread that is responsible for cleaning up expired licenses and returning them to the license pool has not yet run.

Service Pack Information

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Windows 2000. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Hotfix Information

A supported hotfix is available from Microsoft. However, this hotfix is intended to correct only the problem that is described in this article. Apply this hotfix only to systems that are experiencing this specific problem.

If the hotfix is available for download, there is a "Hotfix download available" section at the top of this Knowledge Base article. If this section does not appear, submit a request to Microsoft Customer Service and Support to obtain the hotfix.

Note If additional issues occur or if any troubleshooting is required, you might have to create a separate service request. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for this specific hotfix. For a complete list of Microsoft Customer Service and Support telephone numbers or to create a separate service request, visit the following Microsoft Web site: Note The "Hotfix download available" form displays the languages for which the hotfix is available. If you do not see your language, it is because a hotfix is not available for that language. The Global version of this fix has the file attributes (or later) that are listed in the following table. The dates and times for these files are listed in coordinated universal time (UTC). When you view the file information, it is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time tool in Control Panel.

To work around this problem, restart the Terminal Services licensing service so the expired license can return to the licensing pool.

Note You must wait 15 minutes after you restart the licensing service before the expired license is returned to the licensing pool, and the client can again log on to the Terminal server.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was first corrected in Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4.

Terminal Services licensing has a thread that runs when the Terminal Services licensing service starts. This thread sleeps for 15 minutes when the Terminal Services licensing service starts, and then performs a cleaning operation where it returns expired licenses to the licensing pool. After it completes this operation, this thread sleeps for 24 hours, and then performs the cleaning operation again. It repeats this license-cleaning operation every 24 hours until the Terminal Services licensing service is stopped.

For additional information about how to obtain a hotfix for Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: