DISABLING SBCORE SERVICE – SBS SHUTDOWN EVERY HOUR

With a few SBS 2003 to 2008 migrations going over the 21 day limit (unfortunately due to third party support on line-of-business applications) we found it necessary to use the below to stop the SBS 2003 server shutting down every hour. I do not recommend this or support this as it is in breach of Microsofts EULA – however in some scenario’s it may be critical to ensure a smooth decommissioning of the old SBS 2003 server.

The below is the error log you should see:

Event ID: 1001
Type: Error
Source: SBCore
Description:
The server was shut down because it did not comply with the EULA. For more information, contact Microsoft.

To disable we followed the below:

1. Download the Process Explorer tool from SysInternals – Here
2. Load Process Explorer and look for the SBS Licensing Service – C:\Windows\system32\sbscrexe.exe
3. Select this service and Suspend it – you should find the service greys out
4. Open Regedit and expand the following key – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SBCore
5. Right click this Key and add the Administrators group giving them Full Permission to the key (refresh this and you should see all the key entries now)
6. Select the Start DWORD and change it from 2 to 4 (this sets the Disabled state)
7. Open a File Explorer window and browse to the C:\Windows\system32\sbscrexe.exe file
8. Right click this and load Properties / Security
9. Add the Everyone group and set the Deny permission for Full Access (should then tick the sub permissions)
10. Go back to Process Explorer and now kill the sbscrexe.exe service – this should now be disabled
11. Check the SBCore service via services.msc – it should have a disabled state and now longer be running
12. Job Done.