Getting rid of Temp and unused Licenses

[Shawn]

We have a half dozen or so CALS for Win 9x/ME/XP home
machines. All the CALs are used up, and this is mainly
because some of the machines have been restored, and the
license server has essentially issued two (or more)
licenses to the same client. At the same time, I set up
some XP home machines a few months ago not realizing the
Terminal Services client that comes with XP home is only
temp unlike XP Pro. The XP home CAL's and one Win 98SE
temp CAL have expired and I called MS and had them
reissue half of all our CALs, but it appears that the XP
home and Win98SE computers only picked up temp licenses
again. One exception is that I must have reissued one
CAL too short becuase my own home computer still has an
expired licence and I can't connect. My home computer
was the last to try to connect and get a new license
reissued.

If I clear all our licenses and have MS reissue them all,
will I need to do anything on the clients to erase the
old CAL? Will the usrs of the clients see anything they
will need to know about, or will the CAL reissue be
seemless for them?

Clearing some of the licenses last time I tried to fix
this apparently did not work becuase the right ones did
not get issued permenant licenses and computers that
don't exist or have been restored at least once still
have licenses. I read another post in here that said not
to worry about temp licences becuase a new one will be
resissued when it's needed, however there are other
examples of computers that have been issued permenant
licenses that don't have an experation date and there
aren't any CAL problems with.

Thanks!

Shawn

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

Assuming your licenses were issued after you installed SP3
or the licensing hotfix, any unused licenses will be
returned to the free license pool after about 90 days from
their last use.

We have seen some issued where you need to manually delete
the MSLicensing registry key in order to force the client
to pick up a permanent license. Issuing the licenses
should be a seamless operation, but it is hard to tell how
smooth things will go.

-M

 

[Shawn]

Thanks for the reply! I called MS today and had them re-
issue all our licenses. Unfortunately, the first client
to connect was issued another temp license, and all old
licenses (both valid, temp, and from computers no longer
used or restored) are still visible in the License
Server. This is very annoying becuase it's getting hard
to tell which ones are the real licenses.

I hate to try and walk our non-technical users through
cleaning the registry. Is there anything else I can try
first?

Thanks,

Shawn

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

Yeah, those old licenses will eventually be removed when
the 90 days have passed since their last use. However,
some entries may never disappear, and the only way to get
rid of those entries is to purge your licenses database,
which will involve you calling the clearinghouse again to
get your licenses reissued.

You should only delete the MSLicensing key when absoltely
necessary. Is this the case, or do you want to wait a few
dayd to see how the new licenses work?

-M

 

[Matthew Harrris [MVP]]

Try these links:

support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;287687

support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;294655

-M