Hello PcFascist,
'Yet, I'm sure hunreds of people have download a copy of vista from bit torrent and are having no problems."
and you would be incorrect. Those people are using Windows supplied by someone they don't know (and probably should't trust) who may have included Keyloggers (bye bye Banking, Credit Card or World of Warcraft account information), Botnet worms (slow your PC to a crawl because it's sending spam to half the world), and other Malware (I wouldn't want to save any importent docs on that PC) to the OS. Those people also have to deal with a compromised OS that is more likley to be unstable. Not to mention the worry that thier Pirate Hack could be disabled by Microsoft and stop working at any time and then having to spend the effort to find (and install) a new hack, that still works, but which will likely require them to reinstall Windows...Yep, thoses guys have it good...
As to your issue: 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. The error you receive will dictate what your next step will be.
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. The only resolution we can suggest is 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
