Error Code: 0x80040507 - Preventing Login

I’m getting the following error on one of mw Windows 2003 servers:

Windows Product Activation
Some system Files are missing or damaged. You cannot log on at this tine.
Please use your installation CD to reinstall or repair Windows. Error Code:
0x80040507

Background: This server has been running on Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition
for almost two years now and was successfully activate during the original
installation of the OS. The server has the latest Microsoft patches and
updates applied as well as the latest Antivirus updates. For no apparent
reason that I can find, when I tried to login to the server this morning I
received the aforementioned error. I cannot log in either directly at the
Server or via terminal servers. I have successfully connected to the server
via another server’s Management Console and checked all event logs but can
find nothing out of the ordinary (other than a reference to the “Windows
Product Activation error” I just received). All services, devices, drives
and applications and the server seem to be running just fine! I checked the
MS knowledge base but there is no reference to this error.

Any assistance or suggestion will be greatly appreciated!

Wolf

I discovered a fix for this problem, so I' posting it here in case it helps
some else. Here is what I did to resolve the problem on my machine. First,
since I couldn’t login to the box in question, I used another machine on the
same network and mapped a network drive to the C drive of the affected
machine.

Then, I went into the Windows’ System32 directory and found the wpa.dbl and
wpa.bak files. These are hidden system files so I had to make sure my folder
options were set to show these types of files. Once I found the files, I
renamed the wpa.dbl file to some wpa.old.

I then tried to login to the affected machine again. I was immediately
prompted with a message indicating that Windows needed to be activated. I
selected the option to activate Windows and within a few seconds activation
was complete and I was logged in again and able to use the machine.

I hope this helps someone esle!

"Wolf" wrote:

> I’m getting the following error on one of mw Windows 2003 servers:
>
> Windows Product Activation
> Some system Files are missing or damaged. You cannot log on at this tine.
> Please use your installation CD to reinstall or repair Windows. Error Code:
> 0x80040507
>
> Background: This server has been running on Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition
> for almost two years now and was successfully activate during the original
> installation of the OS. The server has the latest Microsoft patches and
> updates applied as well as the latest Antivirus updates. For no apparent
> reason that I can find, when I tried to login to the server this morning I
> received the aforementioned error. I cannot log in either directly at the
> Server or via terminal servers. I have successfully connected to the server
> via another server’s Management Console and checked all event logs but can
> find nothing out of the ordinary (other than a reference to the “Windows
> Product Activation error” I just received). All services, devices, drives
> and applications and the server seem to be running just fine! I checked the
> MS knowledge base but there is no reference to this error.
>
> Any assistance or suggestion will be greatly appreciated!
>
> Wolf
>
>

Just wanted to say thanks for the help also, this worked for me on xp home too, although i just went in through safe mode and renamed the files, then rebooted.

bLiGhTy.