Hello whitebellysheep,
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 it's 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": 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 receive any other error (System Error 5, System Error 57346 or System Error 54273): These occur as a result of massive file corruption. We do not know what the root cause of the corruption is and this can be caused by any situation where files could be corrupted. However, from troubleshooting others that had this issue, the likeliest causes are either Malware Infection or failing Hard Drive.There are a few things you can try to resolve this issue
a. System Scan. The scan will look for bad Windows files and will attempt to repair them, if possible.
i. Login to Vista in Normal Mode (not safe mode)
ii. Launch an Internet Browser
iii. Type: %windir%\system32\ in the browser's address field
iv. Scroll down till you find the file cmd.exe
v. Right-click the file and select 'Run as Administrator'
vi. In the CMD window, type: sfc /scannow
vii. Reboot twice and see if that resolves the issue.
b. repairing Windows using System Restore:
i. Reboot Vista into Safe Mode
ii. Click the ‘Start’ button
iii. In the Start Search field, type: System Restore and hit “Enter” keyboard key
iv. Select "Choose Different Restore Point", Put a check in the box that says "Show restore points older than 5 days", select the restore point that corresponds to the date Before you first noticed the issue.
v. Click the "Next" button.
vi. Reboot back into Normal mode
If neither of these sets of steps resolves the issue, my only other suggestions would be either to contact Vista support at http://support.microsoft.com or reinstall Vista.
C) If you receive no System Error and the Service start but then stops almost immediately: Something is apparently activity stopping the service. Most likely caused by some other dependent Windows Service or possibly a Malware infection. While the Software Licensing Service, itself, is part of the Anti-piracy sub-system, the running (and stopping) of Windows Services is a Vista core system that I have no insight to and is supported by Vista support at http://support.microsoft.com
Thank you,
Darin MS
