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Hello,
I've been having an issue with my Remote Desktop Session Host running Windows Server 2022 in Azure. Users are able to log in concurrently without any issues, except for a Not Activated watermark appearing in the lower right corner (my Admin account does not see this watermark). Activation settings on the RDS host show the server is 'activated using your organizations activation service' when I check with both admin and non-admin user. When I open the Remote Desktop Licensing Diagnoser, it shows no licensing problems found for the Remote Desktop Session Host server, and also lists the correct RDS User CAL license type/count from my Licensing server, which is listed at the bottom of the diagnostics on the RDS Host and shows Available/Available for Creds/Connectivity. Additionally on the licensing server, I can see all users have the correct User CAL being applied.
I've been slowly troubleshooting this problem for about the last 8 months, as it hasn't caused any work stoppage for users (like I mentioned, users have no problems signing in). I've seen another server that had licensing issues (mismatched User CAL server version) block users from signing in, and I'm definitely not experiencing that. Everything works fine for server in question, except that users are stuck with the Not Activated watermark and cannot personalize their Windows appearance/desktop.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Hello,
RDS cal is not relevant with that watermark, you should solve it by activate your windows (KMS or Retail)
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Hello Karlie,
I mentioned in my question that when I go into Windows Settings > Activation on the server, it shows 'Windows is activated using your organizations activation service', and no activation errors appear for admins or the affected non-admins.
Just to be sure, I've run the KMS activation troubleshooting steps outlined in this article (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/azure/virtual-machines/windows/troubleshoot-activation-problems#contact-us-for-help) and it comes back with the success message 'Activating Windows(R), ServerTurbine edition. Product activated successfully.', and no activation error is shown. Unfortunately this doesn't fix the problem because users are still seeing the 'Not Activated' watermark.
All of my other servers running in Azure that were activated the same way as RDS Host (via Azure KMS?) do not show any activation errors, and I've never seen this problem on any of the Azure VMs I've created from the base Azure marketplace image.
Any other ideas or troubleshooting steps to try?
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We are seeing the same thing in two different RDS environments. I have found that running fclip.exe will temporarily suppress the watermark and show non-admins that the server is activated. But that's a bandaid at best.