Unexpected Shutdown

Unexpected Shutdowns

Some clients have noticed that their Windows Server/s have been shutting down without any notice, most of the issues that have caused this issue is due to the Windows License expiring. With all of our Windows Servers, we only give out Grace Period Licenses, Grace Period licenses are test licenses which are only active for 120 days or less. While this is the most common cause of shutdowns we have noticed, there are other unexpected shutdowns that occur without notice. Some help with the reason for this can be found by opening the "Event Logs" application and filtering by the following "Event IDs" 41, 1074, 6006, 6008. 

Explanation of Event IDs

Event ID 41: The system rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error may happen if you force kill your VPS Server or an unexpected issue occurred with the Windows Server.

Event ID 1074: The system has been shut down by a process or a user. 

Event ID 6006: Logged when the system was shutdown normally/cleanly. Event Log will show as "The Event log service was stopped". This will occur when you power off your VPS Server without killing it.

Event ID 6008: Logged when the system was shutdown forcibly/dirty. Event Log will show as "The previous system shutdown at time on date was unexpected".

Solution

While there are many different ways of solving these issues, we will be going over the way to resolve the unexpected shutdown for expired licenses. To start, make sure you are logged in as an Administrator as you will need to access the Administrator CMD. And then following these steps.

1. Download PsExec tools from the Official Microsoft Site here.
2. After downloading the file, extract it into a folder.
3. Open CMD as Administrator and cd into the folder path where you saved PsExec.
4. Run the following code in the folderpsexec -i -s cmd.exe. (This will open another CMD Window)
5. Type whoami in to the terminal where it should show as authority\system
6. Type services.msc into the terminal, this will open up the Services Application.
7. You will need to navigate to the "Windows License Monitoring Service" or WLMS for short and disable it.

By following the steps, this will stop the unexpected shutdown of Windows Server. If those steps did not work then we have a Solution #2 below.

Solution #2

Here is the second solution if the first solution did not work or is not affecting your VPS Server.

1. Run slmgr -div. This will open a "Windows Script" application with the status of the license attached to the VPS Server. 
2. Look for the "Notification Reason" and the "Remaining Windows rearm count" section where it will say "Grace Time Expired". This means the license has expired. If the rearm count is more or equal to 1, then carry on.
3. Run CMD as Administrator and run slmgr -rearm. This will rearm/reactive your Windows Server license for as many times the rearm count is set to.
4. Reboot the VPS Server. Do not kill the VPS Server.
5. After the reboot is completed, run slmgr -dli to verify that the license is activated.

If you need any help with your Windows Server about unexpected crashes, please let us know here.