Can't start exchange

microsoft.public.exchange.misc

21 Nov 2005 7:35 AM

Alan

Has anyone any ideas.

We have two Windows 2003 standard domain controllers. One of them is running
Exchange 2003 enterprise edition. A few weeks ago we started getting low
virtual memory and extreme virtual memory fragmentation errors for windows
and exchange which could be temporarily reset by a reboot, until the other
day when we rebooted and it didn't come up properly. We can get the desktop
but only a few services start, even the network is not available. The main
services like netlogon, RPC, workstation .. services do not start or seem to
even try and start. There are no immediate errors in the event viewer to do
with these services not starting. Trying to start the RPC service manually
ends up with an, "Error 5: access denied". The same problems occur in safe
mode.

Our only soloution at the moment is to restore our c: using a recent ASR
backup and restoring (non-authorative) the active directory, registry etc,
via a system state backup in directory services mode. Updates in the Active
Directory are repopulated from our second domain controller.

If we set the Exchange services to manual, the server will run without any
problems and can be rebooted as many times as we want without a hitch. But as
soon as we run the system attendant, even just the system attendant, next
time we reboot we get the same problem as I mentioned at the start of this
message. If we don't reboot, the mail and server will run fine without any
problems until the virtual memory/fragmenation problem arises in around 10 or
so hours and we have to reboot and start the restoration process again. Our
mail stores and logs are on D: and we don't have to restore them.

I am out of ideas and can' t understand how the system attendant service
could do the damage its doing.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.