Citrix licensing Service crashes after startup | event 1000 | lmadmin.exe

The following article describes how to fix the issue when the Citrix Licensing service crashes immediately after startup.

When trying to start the Citrix Licensing Service from your services console (services.msc), the service appears to start, but then stops immediately. In your eventlog the following error is generated:

Log Name: Application
Source: Application Error
Event ID: 1000
Task Category: (100)
Level: Error
Description:
Faulting application name: lmadmin.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x4a01594d
Faulting module name: lmadmin.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x4a01594d
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0005d8c2
Faulting process id: 0x2360
Faulting application start time: 0x01ca9d0655178830
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\Licensing\LS\lmadmin.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\Licensing\LS\lmadmin.exe
Report Id: 93817aba-08f9-11df-bf2c-000c29942263

Although ONE solution to this problem is to reinstall the Licensing Service. However, this is time-consuming and definitely not a best-practice 🙂

Solution:
Whenever this problem occurs, the best solution is to delete or rename the following files:
c:\program files\citrix\licensing\ls\conf\activation_state.xml
c:\program files\citrix\licensing\ls\conf\concurrent_state.xml

If you’re running a 64bit OS, the path would be
c:\program files (x86)\citrix\licensing\ls\conf\activation_state.xml
c:\program files (x86)\citrix\licensing\ls\conf\concurrent_state.xml

After renaming / deleting the files, start the service. The Licensing service should work as expected. The files activation_state.xml and concurrent_state.xml are automatically regenerated.

This article applies to XenApp and XenDesktop