Terminal Services Licensing Service does not start (274026)

IMPORTANT: This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry

SYMPTOMS

When you try to start the Terminal Services Licensing service, it may not start. This can occur even though the Terminal Services Licensing service appears to be installed when you view the Add/Remove Programs tool in Control Panel, and the Terminal Services Licensing service .exe file (%SystemRoot%\System32\Lserver.exe) is installed on your computer. This issue may not be resolved after you uninstall and then reinstall the Terminal Services Licensing service. Also, if you view the following registry key, the termservlicensing service key may be missing:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services

CAUSE

This issue may occur if the parsing of the Licenoc.inf file does not work. This behavior may occur if either of the following conditions exist:

The permissions on the "All users" profile are set to administrator=read. This causes the parsing of the Licenoc.inf file to fail when the shortcuts are created but the registry key is not created.
The Licenoc.inf file is corrupted.

WORKAROUND

WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

To work around this issue, export the following registry key from a computer that can correctly start the Terminal Services Licensing service, and then import this key into the computer that cannot correctly start the Terminal Services Licensing service:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Termservlicensing

Note After you follow this procedure, you may have to reinstall any service packs that you previously installed.