You might want to reset the RDP server grace period when you are running a test-server, or when you have a license key but re-installed your server and forgot to deactivate the licence before the re-install. Because it then is still activated, the Microsoft activation servers see this as a new activation on an already activated key and you also won’t be able to do the activation manually but need Microsoft support to reset the activation which is virtually impossible when you have a “simple” SMB licence.
See also this site for Microsoft support for volume licensing.
See also this article or this one.
High level view of the required steps:
- Gain administrative access to the server
- Check the current Grace period using TLSBLN.exe
- Use registry editor and browse to the Graceperiod key for RDP licensing.
- Obtain required privileges for removing the key.
- Remove the key.
- Restart the RDP server service (or reboot the Server)
Once the Grace period has expired you won’t be able to login to the server using a “regular” RDP session. You should still be able to gain access via admin mode, e.g. using
mstsc /admin
You might have seen a message like “” popping up. When you are curious about the latest status just type the command TLSBLN.exe at a command prompt, or directly in the windows search box and hit enter. This will show the Terminal Services License Server Balloon stating how many days are left in the grace period.
If you are near the end of this period you might want to renew the grace period. This is possible by removing the timebomb key that is in the Windows registry at \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\ RCM\GracePeriod\L$RTMTIMEBOMB_*
Use the registry editor to browse to this key, then first obtain the required privileges by making the administrator user owner of the Graceperiod key and the giving it required permissions. Then remove the L$RTMTIMEBOMB_* key.
After removing the key either reboot the server (safest) or restart the “Remote Desktop Services” service (this will also require restarting the “Remote Desktop Services UserMode Port Redirector” service). Note that if an issue occurs during restarting the RDS service and you are not on-site, you have the risk of locking out yourself. Make sure you have an alternative way of logging on to the server (or safely restarting it).
Before rebooting the server, you might want to check if any users are logged in on the server via the RDP server, the simplest way to do this is to use task manager – Users, where you can see which users are logged on and have active connections.
After that a new L$RTMTIMEBOMB_* registry key is created in the GracePeriod key and a new 120 day grace period is started.
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