Where are my CALS? June 13, 2009

For all my fellow Small Business Server users, this week I was greeted with an issue with one of my client’s informing me that they are not able to access the mapped network drives “Connection to resource has exceeded maximum connections” After extensive searching in Event Viewer > System logs, I came across the following entry;

Event Type:        Error
Event Source:    SBCore
Event Category:     None
Event ID:              1023
Date:                     6/11/2009
Time:                     7:08:27 PM
User:                     N/A
Computer:          XXXXXX
Description:
The license store for the client access licenses is not valid. Only the minimum number of client access licenses will be available until a valid license store is restored. For more information, see Help in the Licensing snap-in.

 Open Server Management > Licenses, found that  installed CALs (50 Client access licenses) disappeared leaving only the default “5”. 

There are three main methods for restoring the License Store.

Method 1: If you had previously exported the license store after entering the CALS and activating them, you can simply restore that file.

Method 2: If you have the actual CAL codes you can re-enter and activate the CALS.

Method 3: If you have a backup of your system drive you can locate the file licstr.cpa which is located in %systemroot%/system32  folder. Simply replace this file on your affected system with the previously backed up licstr.cpa.  (This method was the one that worked in my situation)

Now after you have restored the licstr.cpa file in its original location, be sure to restart the license logging service.

Word of caution for those who have not experience this issue, take a backup of your license store!