I am having issues again, this time since licence migration from dongle licence, when opening W11.
I sometimes get this error message after the ‘checking licences’ message:
Followed by this after closing the above window:
Opening SAM results in this window… seemingly indefinitely:
Close SAM and look in Task Manager - find the Steinberg Licence Engine is running - so End Task:
Try opening SAM again and whahay!
Try opening W11 again and yes, success.
The ‘dance’ is not always the same, sometimes doesn’t happen at all, but it is an irritation for sure.
All pretty similar to what I experienced a month or so ago (before licence migration) - the solution then, as advised by P, was to reinstall the SAM, but don’t want to make assumptions and possibly a mess 
W11.1 on W10 (always up to date) - latest gen i7 - Gigabyte Mobo - 64GB of RAM