Windows Server Service Provider Registry fails to start - error 1067 The process terminated unexpectedly

Question

Hello experts,
   I have a SBS 2011 Essentials installation that suddenly has an empty dashboard.
Event viewer:
APPLICATION LOG - Event ID: 1000 Source: Application Error
General Description:
Faulting application name: ProviderRegistryService.exe, version: 6.1.1840.0, time stamp: 0x4d6dafda
Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Exception code: 0x80131623
Fault offset: 0x000007fe958b0717
Faulting process id: 0xff8
Faulting application start time: 0x01cf340bce30552f
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Windows Server\Bin\ProviderRegistryService.exe
Faulting module path: unknown
Report Id: 0befeb0f-9fff-11e3-852b-d4ae52c1faae
APPLICATION LOG - Event ID: 1025 Source: .Net Runtime
General Description:
Application: ProviderRegistryService.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The application requested process termination through System.Environment.FailFast(string message).
Message: Unhandled exception in OnStart: System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Not a valid Win32 FileTime.
Parameter name: fileTime at System.DateTime.FromFileTimeUtc(Int64 fileTime)
SYSTEM LOG -Event ID: 7031 Source: Service Control Manager General Description:
The Windows Server Service Provider Registry service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this xx0 time(s).  The following corrective action will be taken in 60000 milliseconds: Restart the service.
When I try to start this service I get 'error 1067 - The process terminated unexpectedly'. I have checked all dependencies of this particular service and they are all running properly. I've restarted these dependencies, disabled Kaspersky
protection, restarted the Server a few times to no avail.
Any ideas? Thank you!

Answer 1

I had this exact same problem! Thank you so much Robert for posting a link to that script! That is truly an amazing Powershell script.
I had all the same errors that AK772 mentioned, but I chose to zoom in on a different issue that the script pointed out. When I ran the "Test CA Infrastructure" step it found several errors. When I looked at what the script was doing there it was
comparing the server certificate thumbprint in the registry (HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows Server\Identity) with the personal certificates (Personal Certificates in the Certificate snap-in using MMC). When I looked through them individually, sure enough
the thumbprint in the registry didn't exist in my certificate store. I have NO idea how this could have happened!
However, from there, I changed my Google search criteria and found the following excellent article:
http://titlerequired.com/2013/04/29/windows-server-2012-essentials-an-error-prevented-the-dashboard-from-opening/
This told more about that error and showed how to regenerate the certificate identity in the registry. This totally saved me! Once I ran through the steps that he outlines, even though I got a timeout error towards the end, I could see that the certificate
thumbprint had changed in the registry and now existed in my personal certificate store.
Once I saw this, I tried going into services and manually starting the stopped "Windows Server Service Provider Registry" service. Sure enough it started right up, no error this time. Finally, I restarted the server so that all of the other dependent
services would come back up and re-ran the linked script above and everything was perfect.
Thanks so much for the breadcrumbs in this post and all of your contributions. I hope that this post will equally be able to help someone else through this very troublesome and evasive error!