Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration includes the Licensing Diagnosis tool. Licensing Diagnosis provides information to help identify possible licensing problems for the Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host) server.
Each user or computing device that connects to an RD Session Host server must have a valid Remote Desktop Services client access license (RDS CAL) issued by a Remote Desktop license server.
An RD Session Host server must be able to contact a Remote Desktop license server in order to request RDS CALs for users or computing devices that are connecting to the RD Session Host server.
The primary purpose of Licensing Diagnosis is to determine which license servers the RD Session Host server is configured to use and whether those license servers have RDS CALs available to issue to users or computing devices that are connecting to the RD Session Host server. In addition, Licensing Diagnosis will try to identify any possible licensing problems and provide suggested resolutions to those problems.
Use the following procedure to run the Licensing Diagnosis tool.
Membership in the local Administrators group, or equivalent, on the RD Session Host server that you plan to configure, is the minimum required to complete this procedure. Review details about using the appropriate accounts and group memberships at
 | To run the Licensing Diagnosis tool |
On the RD Session Host server, open Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration. To open Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration, click Start, point to Administrative Tools, point to Remote Desktop Services, and then click Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration.
In the left pane, click Licensing Diagnosis. Licensing Diagnosis will automatically run and try to contact the license servers that the RD Session Host server is configured to use and identify licensing configuration problems, and then display the results.
There are four main sections to Licensing Diagnosis:
- Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration Details, which displays configuration information about the RD Session Host server, including the licensing mode that has been specified for the RD Session Host server.
- Licensing Diagnosis Information, which displays any licensing problems that were identified along with suggested resolutions to the problems.
- Remote Desktop Services License Server Information, which displays the license servers that the RD Session Host server is configured to use.
- License Server Configuration Details, which displays configuration information about a license server, including the type and version of RDS CALs installed and available on that license server.
To view the configuration details of a selected license server, the account that you are logged on as needs administrator privileges on the license server. If your account does not have administrator privileges on the license server, you can use Provide Credentials in the Licensing Diagnosis tool to provide credentials that have administrative privileges on the license server.
 | Important |
To view the configuration details of a Windows 2000 or a Windows Server 2003 license server, you must provide the credentials of the built-in local Administrator account on the license server. The credentials of any other account, even if that account has administrator privileges on the license server, will not allow you to view the configuration details. |
For more information about RD Licensing, see the Remote Desktop Services page on the Windows Server 2008 R2 TechCenter (