When installing Master Data Services (MDS) in SQL Server 2012 or installing SQL Server 2012 sp1 (and possibly a CU), you might see the message “The Microsoft SQL Server license has expired” when trying to pull up the MDS web UI.  The page is redirected to ‘/MDS/EvaluationExpired.aspx’ with the title “Evaluation period expired”.  If you turn on trace logging you will see:

MDS Error: 0 : Error 193 (0x000000c1). Unable to load sqlboot.dll from path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Shared\sqlboot.dll

This problem only seems to happen on a server that has SQL Server 2008 R2 installed, even if SQL Server 2008 R2 has been un-installed.

The solution is:

1. Rename the C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Shared\sqlboot.dll to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Shared\sqlboot.dll.x64
2. Copy the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Shared\sqlboot.dll to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Shared\sqlboot.dll
3. Start and stop the MDS Application Pool

Then it will work!

More info:

MDS Error: 0 : Evaluation period has expired

MDS: The Microsoft SQL Server licence has expired – CTP upgrade