Recently I ran into a problem of a 2003 Small Business Server showing no additional Connection Access Licenses (CAL’s) other than the 5 that comes installed by default. This stopped all access to the server’s resources except for 5 concurrent users. After doing lots or research and digging I found that there are 2 files that are responsible for storing the added CAL’s that have been purchased and Server 2003 actually has a backup process built in. Windows stores the purchased CAL information in a file called licstr.cpa in the WindowsSystem32 directory. The backup file that is created is called autolicstr.cpa file in the same system directory.

To restore the missing CAL’s all you have to do is stop the server’s License Logging Service, rename the licstr.cpa to licstr_old.cpa, then make a copy of autolicstr.cpa and then rename it to licstr.cpa and then restart the License Logging Service and the CAL’s should be populated in the installed licenses of the Server Management console.

After verifying that you have the licenses back in place it is advisable that you create a backup/export of the licenses for safe keeping..