SQL Server 2012 can't start because of a login failure

Question

I recently installed Microsoft SQL Server 2012 on a fresh Windows 7 installation, but whenever I want to run the server, I get the following error:

Error

Answer 1

This happened to me. A policy on the domain was taking away the SQL Server user account's "Log on as a service" rights. You can work around this using JLo's solution, but does not address the group policy problem specifically and it will return next time the group policies are refreshed on the machine.

The specific policy causing the issue for me was: Under, Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> User Rights Assignments: Log on as a service

You can see which policies are being applied to your machine by running the command "rsop" from the command line. Follow the path to the policy listed above and you will see its current value as well as which GPO set the value.