fix Windows 7 not genuine error

Today I had a customer with a complain about her copy of windows not being genuine,  I was the one who re installed windows on her PC, it was a Toshiba computer with a windows 7 pro and a license on the bottom of the computer.

After spending some time researching, I found an error in the Event Viewer,

The Cryptographic Services service failed to initialize the Catalog Database. The ESENT error was: -583.

I then went and tried this solution that I found on the web;

Repair the catalog database by using Esentutl

To repair the catalog database by using Esentutl:

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, and then click Accessories.
2. Right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.
3. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Continue.
4. In the command prompt window, type net stop cryptsvc to stop Cryptographic Services, and then press ENTER.
5. Type esentutl /p <%systemroot%>\System32\catroot2\{F750E6C3-38EE-11D1-85E5-00C04FC295EE}\catdb, and then press ENTER.

 

This didn’t worked.

I then went and tried to rename the catroot2 folder, since windows will automatically recreate this folder with its contents in it.  That didn’t worked ether.

After more research, I found out that the System Update Readiness tool will fix any kind of corruptions related to Cryptographic service and its files.

Available here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947821

I went and started the install for the System Update Readiness tool, after the long process, it finished with no result or response.  After that I was still getting errors on the Event Viewer.

After that I went and replaced the Hard Drive.  I did a acronis clone process.  after the cloning was done, I went and started the computer and started to install the System Update Readiness tool.

After the tool was done, I went and click the finish button. That was telling me that the tool finished successfully.  I then went and restarted the computer.  Went to the Event Viewer to look for any error messages, none where found.

I then went and started a sfc /scannow to make sure I had no corrupted system files.

The issue was fixed.

What was happening is that the Cryptographic Service was the one that was making sure windows was validated.  when that service failed to start, or to stay on it started to tell the user that the windows install was not genuine.