Once the clients get a license they will be able to access the RDS server without having to get another license. Are these new clients or existing clients?

Ah, ok!
These were existing clients, indeed. That must be the problem. Will investigate tomorrow, thanks.

Darius,

now I tried it. Stopped the service, took a brand new user and he could log on (full session, not remopteapp)! In event viewer, no licenses show as issued today. I don't get it.

Is the user using a device that has already connected to the Terminal Server before? You could be using Device CALs not User CALs

No, I am using user CALs.
But do you agree that the service "Remote Desktop Licensing" is "the place to be" when it comes to shutting down the license server? It shouldn't work if that service is stopped, should it?

Shouldn't give out licenses. RDS though could be giving out temp licenses though which it can do. Why do you want to stop the licensing? Could be another solution

Because I suppose our license server is broken. It provides much more licenses than it ought to. Also, reporting just produces crap and tells me all licenses are available and that people are logged on that definitely aren't.
I hoped to find out more about it or (what this seems to prove) acknowledge that the license server provides unlimited licenses and is therefore broken.

Are you getting any errors in the Event logs? Could be handing out temp licenses. Check  the RDS configuration make sure it is pointing to your license server

Eventlogs are perfectly clean, server is freshly installed.

The reason I thought it is broken was not only that it issued too many licenses but that starting remoteapps took very long (20s) - this began after we activated the lic. server, before, it took a remoteapp about 2s to startup (the server is very fast).

I reimaged the server to a point in time where we did not have that problem and I moved the license server to a different server. Will be back tomorrow and see how it goes. First test showed startup time is back to normal.

Starup of remoteapps is still ok, licensing however still is not. No change here - could it be that the licensing server component is buggy and does not even consider remoteapp usage as license consuming?

From an existing user delete "MSlicensing" folder from the registry (HKLM/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/MSlicensing).

if it had a temp license or something, by deleting this folder it will make the client to request for a new lic. After that, take a look and see if the lic was issued by your lic server or not.

I really think it a temp license getting handed out.

Look in your Terminal Server Config what license server is it pointing too?

@psychogr: What do you mean "from an existing user"? I ask because HKLM is not user specific.
What would happen if I did? Inside there is only one Key: HardwareID with ClientHWID as a reg_binary value. The other key "Store" is empty.

@Dariusg: How could I prove that? The config is alright, believe me. It's pointing to the correct server and saysw everything is alright.

By "an existing user" i mean a user that had already connected to the terminal services. (Sorry for my bad, bad English)
If the keystore folder is empty then no license was issued for this machine. And probably your ts lic server never worked as it should.

If iam correct, deleting this folder is something like clearing lic cache for the machine. Simply it will force the system to re-issue a lic.

Ouh... this topic starts to kill me.
I finally found something: It's a problem with users that have been created prior to migration to 2008 DCs, see http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverTS/thread/4084188d-b979-440f-b81a-29cc08162f38/

Now at least I can see the server issues licenses after editing the ACLs mentioned. However, reporting is still broken: 15 of 15 lics are available.
Since MS does not even stop issueing licenses if I checkout 25 (10 more than we have), I think they don't even have a mechanism to stop users logging on if lics are exceeded. Am I right?

I found an article in an MS newsgroup supporting this theory also and there, MVPs were amongst the subscribers of the thread, so at last: I don't even have a problem.

What do you think?

Found the key article myself.