Windows Server 2012 licensing issue preventing RDP connections?

Posted by QF_Developer on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by QF_Developer
Published on 2014-08-23T14:57:11Z Indexed on 2014/08/23 16:23 UTC
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I am witnessing an unusual behaviour on 1 of 5 Windows Server 2012 R2 machines (clean install) that is preventing any remote connections from being established via RDP. I have run through the prerequisites for RDP here but I am finding that any remote connection attempt instantly stops the "Windows Protection Service". When I check the event logs I see the following entry.

The Software Protection Service has stopped
Event ID: 903
Source: Security-SPP

From what I have read Security-SPP is tasked with enforcing activation and licensing, it appears that RDP requires this service to be in the running state.

Is it possible that I have inadvertently activated this instance of Windows with a key that has already been associated to another instance (We have 5 keys as part of an MSDN subscription)? Would this be sufficient to block RDP access?

When I look under System Properties (Windows Activation) it states that Windows is activated and there are no other obvious indicators that there's a licensing issue.

EDIT 1:

I ran a Powershell script to display the product keys for all servers in order to check for any duplication. For the problematic server I am getting the message The RPC server is unavailable.

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