Hello Jason
Thank you for visiting us :-).
The problem is that your Vista's Software Licensing Service has stopped. Vista uses this service to check itself and confirm it is Genuine. When the service is stopped, Vista is unable to confirm its own Genuine status and may show Genuine or Non-Genuine. The fact that the Service has stopped is also, most likely, the cause of other issues you may be experiencing (such as not having access to the Control Panel).
Normally this is not a big problem, since you can just restart the Service. However, we have seen a number of users that receive an error when they attempt to restart the Service. This indicates a more serious 'root cause' to the service having stopped.
What I would like you to do is to try to restart the service using the 'Service Restart' steps, below. If the service won't restart, you will receive an error.
Service Restart steps:
(If you have access to the Start button):
1) Click the Start button
2) Type: cmd in the Start Search field
3) At the top the Start window, you will see cmd.exe
4) Right Click cmd.exe and select Run as Administrator
5) Type: net start slsvc
(If you do not have access to the Start button):
1) Click the option that launches an Internet Browser
2) A Browser will open, type: %windir%\system32 into the address field
3) Find the file cmd.exe
4) Right Click on the cmd.exe and select Run as Administrator
5) Type: net start slsvc
A) If the error message is "System Error 3, The system cannot find the path specified." or "System Error 2, The system cannot find the file specified" then go to the main Vista Validation forum page http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/genuinevista/threads/, look in the announcement section and follow the steps found in thread "Fix for ‘Software Licensing service Has Stopped’ on some Vista 64bit systems"
B) If you get any other error, please follow and answer the below steps and questions
What was the Full error message, you received, when you attempted to restart the Service?
Have you recently installed or replaced any Hardware or Software?
Do you have any Registry Cleaner software installed? (include the name and version)
Do you have a Anti-Virus program that is up-to-date with all updates and signature files?
If so, run a complete scan. Did it find anything?
Also go to http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/center/whatsnew.htm and run a complete scan using the OneCare Safety Scan for Windows Vista. Did it find anything?
Thank you Jason,
Stephen
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