We help IT Professionals succeed at work.

Microsoft Office can't find your license for this application

Luca
Luca asked
on
5 Comments
1 solution
High Priority
59 Views
Last Modified: 2020-03-19
Problem:
The following message appears randomly on some of our vdi clients (maybe 30-40 of our 1000 VDIs) . There are no signs on our kms server that the license has not been activated properly

"Microsoft Office can't find your license for this application. A repair attempt was unsuccessful or was cancelled. Microsoft Office will now exit."

As i see the sppsvc.exe (Software Protection Service) which has startup type "Automatic - delayed start" will be started as soon an office application will be started. We also determined (procmon.exe) that the process will loop through various files and folders in C:\Windows\System32\catroot, C:\Windows\WinSxS, various Registry Keys and its subkeys while starting. Sometimes the services taske more then 25s to start, sometimes less than 8s.

2019-12-10-18_35_36-Admin-Desktop.png
I guess that the problem is that as soon an office application has been started and the service has a very delayed start, this message occurs. Office licensestatus is empty and turns "green" as soon the sppsvc.exe service has been started.

2019-12-10-18_31_13-All-Notebooks---.png2019-12-10-18_31_22-All-Notebooks---.png

Office will be activated while client deployment with the following statements

cscript "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /rearm
cscript "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /inpkey:<KMS KEY>
cscript "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /act

Enviroment
VDI based on VMware View Horizon 7.5
OS: Server 2016 1607 LTSB
Office: 2016

Regarding https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/381117-microsoft-office-cant-find-your-license-for-this-application/ a possible workaround could be to rename the C:\Windows\System32\Catroot folder but i am unaware of the possible impacts
Cleanmgr.exe has already been executed which removed about 10'000 files in C:\Windows\System32\CatRoot\{F750E6C3-38EE-11D1-85E5-00C04FC295EE}
There is only one office 2016 kms license key installed on the system
Comment
Watch Question

View Solution Only

Daniel PineaultPresident / Owner CARDA Consultants Inc.
CERTIFIED EXPERT
Distinguished Expert 2018

Commented:
Since you are a paying client, why not call their support and let them fix it for you?
LucaSystem Engineer

Author

Commented:
If you already called Microsoft Support i assume that you know that this call would be useless. VMware points to Microsoft
Daniel PineaultPresident / Owner CARDA Consultants Inc.
CERTIFIED EXPERT
Distinguished Expert 2018

Commented:
For Activation issues, MS has always helped me resolve the issue.  Surprised this wasn't the case for you.
LucaSystem Engineer

Author

Commented:
Unfortunately we are still debugging the problem with MS Support which is not really helpful...
System Engineer
Commented:
We finally found the issue!

Issue caused by installed VMware View Agent 7.5.1-9182637 and enabled feature "Scanner-Redirection". The Scanner Redirection installed an old version of ftapihook64.dll which delayed the start of the "Software Protection Service" which controls the licensing of Office with enabled KMS.

In our case the software proctection service loaded the old / corrupted ftapihook64.dll and started scanning the whole "%windir\System32\CatRoot" folder and opened all .cat files which took too long which caused the timout of the sppsvc.exe service.
As soon the Scanner Redirection Feature was uninstalled / disabled or a more recent version of VMware View Agent was installed the problem was solved.