even loggin in as administrator the software protection service is failing to start on a win7 machine. the activation status is unavialable. any ideas??

I'd ask them here. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/w7itpro http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7?tab=all Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows]

Hi, Thanks for the post. Just in case, you may have interests in troubleshotting on you own. Here is something we could try: 1. Use Process Monitor to monitor the file and registry activities. 2. Try to manually start the SPP service. 3. When the error message shows up, please stop the capture and search for anything related to Access Denied in the log file. Thanks, MilesPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.