Symptoms
The document-conversion services that were obsoleted in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 are not secure when the services run in an environment in which the web front-end (WFE) server role is located on the server that is running as an application server (that is, on the same server as the services).
Resolution
A new registry key has to be set to acknowledge that the administrator configured the services to run on the application server. This configuration differs from the WFE configuration and is not open to external communication. In this configuration, only intranet-level network traffic should be enabled. This is similar to the four-application-server configuration that is described in the "Services and the Service Application Framework" section of the SharePoint 2010 Architectures Overview.
The new key is called "AcknowledgedRunningOnAppServer" and is of the DWORD type. It must be set to 1 to enable the services to start. The paths on which the key must be set are as follows:
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HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\version\LauncherSettings
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HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\version\LoadBalancerSettings
Notes-
The placeholder version represents 12.0 for SharePoint Server 2007, 14.0 for SharePoint Server 2010, and 15.0 for SharePoint Server 2013.
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Unless the registry keys are set for each document-conversion service (Launcher and Load Balancer), the services cannot start.
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More Information
For more information about Document Conversions services, go to the following Microsoft website:
