“How to stop the ‘SBCore Service’ Service” or “How to use SBS2003 as a normal server”
AKA How to stop Windows SBS2003 from shutting down automatically.
Most of this info was found here: http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?t=173731
Note: Removing this service apparently violates the license agreement for Microsoft Small Business Server. See the details here if you care.
Tools you’ll need – Process Explorer from www.sysInternals.com http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx
As you probably know, you have a service called “SBCore Service”, which executes the following process: C:WINDOWSsystem32sbscrexe.exe
If you kill it, it just restarts – and if you try and stop it you are told Access Denied.
If you fire up Process Explorer, you can select the process and Suspend it, now we can start to disable the thing.
Run regedt32.exe and find:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesSBCoreRight click this, choose Permissions and give the “Administrators” group on the local machine full access (don’t forget to replace permissions on child nodes).
Press F5 in regedt32 to refresh, and you’ll see all of the values and data under this key.
Select the “Start” DWORD and change it from 2 to 4 – this sets the service to the “Disabled” state as far as the MMC services snap-in (and windows for that matter) is concerned.
In the original instructions, the author left the service as Disabled and just denied access to the executable:
Next, adjust the permissions on the file C:WINDOWSsystem32sbscrexe.exe so that EVERYONE account is
denied any sort of access to this file.Then go back to process explorer, and kill the sbscrexe.exe process, if it doesn’t restart – congratulations!
Load up the services MMC snap-in and you should find that “SBS Core Services” is stopped and marked as Disabled.
I decided that I wanted the service gone completely, so (after exporting it), I just deleted the registry key while in regedt32.
After rebooting, I verified that the service was indeed gone from the list of services in MMC, and there was no sbscrexe.exe process running. Then I moved the file sbscrexe.exe from C:windowssystem32 into a tidy little folder along with my exported registry key to keep for future evaluation. Something like a disgusting little bug under glass.
Worked like a charm – wondered what was causing the server to restart so often, the Event viewer wasn’t logging anything about this at all.
Great post, stupid SBS. Your solution works well for SBS2003 which I don’t want as a DC (we have a Linux DC instead) but must keep for a legacy application. Thank you for posting this.
The best bit about this – apart from disabling the stupid reboot policy – is that bug under the glass. I see all of MS like that quite often… a collection of bugs.
.. specially today when installed 2x Win 2012 servers – but they failed to install AD as they had the same local user names – should this be an issue? no. but I searched and found “This is a code defect in Windows Server 2012” – you wonder sometimes..
Thank you so much! I’ve been dealing with the server shutting down for the past few days. I really appreciate the post. It worked great!
Jeremy, do you know if there is any way of doing the same process on an SBS 2008? I am planning a SBS 2008 to SBS 2011 migration and would love to be able to leave the 2008 up and running for a bit longer than the 21 days allowed. Thanks for any info you might have on this!
Sean
Hi Sean – sorry, I missed your comment on this. I have not tried this with 2008 or 2011 myself… were you successful in isolating the sbcore service or did Microsoft get smarter?
Thank you, sir, for the article. It came in handy for a client needing to run a LOB application that could not be migrated due to wonderful SQL limitations in SBS 2011 Standard. Billed this as a temporary solution, to give them time to swallow the additional cost of the premium add-on and a dedicated SQL server (actually planning on re-purposing the old server).
Now lets watch in typical end-user fashion, as this temporary solution runs for the next 2 years. LOL.
Thanks again for the article.
Vince
No doubt! Good luck on getting them to spend when your free solution works!
FYI to all – DO NOT set the “Start” value to 0 (zero).
I did after trying to remember this from memory, it caused a continuous boot loop – zero is a boot time service. I had to boot up with a recovery disk, load up mass storage drivers, load the system registry hive and modify the value to 4.
PAIN IN THE @SS!!!
I migrated from sbs2003 to 2008 r2 and thought i had 21 days to finished the migration. After the server shutdown after only 7 days I found out that they had migrated from sbs 2000 to sbs2003 years ago. This wipes out your 21 days and gives you only 7 days. I found this article and followed it and the server is no longer shutting down every 2 hours. Thanks Kerry
Used this twice for 2003-2011 migrations so far, works great! Many thanks!
migration from sbs2003 to 2011 went wrong and cant receive mail without original server running… needed more time to troubleshoot, but was not happy having to start the server every 2 hours after the auto-shutdown. Thanks for the tip!
You saved my client’s bacon. They are too migrating and needed a temporary hack. Genius! Thanks
thanks for the info. I stumbled on to this post while doing some research on our first SBS migration from 2003 to 2011. Client wanted to keep the old sbs 2003 in production for at least 1 more year due to a LOB app running on it.
This worked great for a SBS 2003. I was migrating SBS 2003 to SBS2011 and I ran out of time. Thanks to this I have plenty of time left over now. Thanks!
Great. I works 🙂
i used
ren sbscrexe.exe to sbscrexe.ex_
taskkill /T /IM “sbscrexe.exe”
and then quick set permision on service and disable it
Great Tip Workks great for my dual SBS DC’s
Rad. Worked for my late-migration situation, thanks for the tip. I didn’t however opt to keep my disgusting little bug afterward, I flushed mine down the toilet with the rest of SBS…
hi guys i also got same prbs in 1 of my client’s server i tried a lot bt i was unable to solve the
issue now wit ur help i can able to stop the service, thank u buddy thank u very much….
Ran into issues migrating to SBS2008…spent three weekends in a row trying to get it going…your advice is the best hack I have found in my 38 years of managing computers and networks…
Namaste
You are my hero! I was also migrating to SBS 2008, but hit a snag with some extra software and was waiting for the vendor before I could move it to the new server. In the meantime, I thought I would demote the sbs2003 server to get it ready to shut down. Unfortunately that started the timer for the 7 day shutdown again (silly me, when MS said I had 21 days for the servers to co-exist, I thought I would have 21 days). So long story short, you saved my bacon!
hi,
i also experienced the same problem, after migrating to windows Small business server 2008 from SBS 2003.
i tried all the ways told by so many experts. i cant disable the service.
then i tried booting thru recovery console.
i disabled the service from there using simple one command. i rebooted and it’s gone. Hurray. i did it.
thanks for all.
philip