Exchange server doesn't start on reboot?

[Vyper28]

I have a client with server 2003 R2 and exchange server 2007. Whenever the server is rebooted, which is frequently enough given that they are in the worst power location in the city (They get drops about once a month for a few hours). The problem is, when it reboots the exchange information store doesn't start on its own.

I've checked the startup settings on the server, everything is fine. I tried setting it to "retry" on subsequent failures every 1 minute, still never starts. The server logs an error that says "The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service terminated with service specific error 0 (0x0)." after a reboot, so I can tell that it does TRY to start and then crashes.

If I start it manually a few minutes after the reboot, it works no problem. I tried setting a registry dependency for the IS service, and also a delayed start of 1200ms. No joy.

Has anyone experienced anything like this or have any possible solutions?

 

[OfficeTechs]

i think your immediate problem is stopping it rebooting in the first place. If the EDB datastore gets corrupted you will have plenty fun and games with that. They cant spring for a UPS?

I think perhaps because of the crash other services are taking longer to start which then prevents the message store service from starting until those services are happily running.

As a bit of a fudge you could set a scheduled task of a script to run every so often starting the message store service, add some error checking to see if its already running first, thats not even really necessary as if its already started the script will just fail.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Pretty soon you'll get lots of practice at restoring the infostore from backup. Lots of rude shutdowns...and that huge database starts getting corrupted. How soon or how bad depends on many different things, but it will happen.

If their power issues are so bad that a big UPS like an APC 2200 or 3000 XL series can't even help, time to seriously consider hosted Exchange like Office 365.

In the mean time, it's time for you to get familiar with ESEUTIL and wrap your arms around that infostore and nurture it back to health.

 

[Vyper28]

We installed a couple UPS' yesterday after I posted this, they aren't huge but they have a card with them and software to perform a full shut down. Hopefully that's the long term solution.

However, I still need to figure out why the exchange store fuggers up after a reboot. I'll read up on ESEUTIL and try get it back to operating health. I also learned from the owner that previous to us taking over here, the tech company that had been working on their server had been in 2-3 times a week due to blue screens and crashes. They finally changed something in the server and it doesn't crash anymore, but they didn't say what. So as usual, I'm cleaning up someone else's mess!

The server has a bay with 4 drives in it, and it looks like they only plugged 1 sata power cable in to the bay... the bay is powering all 4 drives, and they work, but I see a bunch of NTFS and DISK errors in the event viewer. Have you ever heard of a drive box that can run 4 drives off 1 sata power? I plugged in the 3 other connectors last night as well and will be checking it when I arrive at the office shortly.

I would love to just do a setup once, instead of being sent to the "everything dun broke" clients on cleanup duty

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Sata disks....ewww. x 10 for Exchange....EWWWWWW

Makes me also think a poor RAID controller so even more issues for power outages as they don't have the anti corruption features that good real RAID controllers have.

ESEUTIL has various features....repair (several versions), defrag....
You'll have to take the infostore "offline"...so it's an after hours thing you'll do remotely. Also need at least 115% of the infostore size in free space on the drive that it's on...to run it. Makes a copy of the infostore and works from that then replaces the original.

 

[Phil Coulson]

Hi,
Exchange server can be started by using many different methods.
In which,
The first method is to start Exchange server manually.
The second method which you can use BootPause to delay start up of exchange server in seconds after reboot.
The third method which you can use Microsoft Exchange System Attendant services to start Exchange server after reboot.

If you are getting error in starting Exchange Server automatically then you can use fix tools which are provided by Microsoft.
You can also change dependencies of Exchange Server services manually by editing registry files.
Know more about fixing the issue "Exchange Server does not start automatically after reboot" then you can go to this link
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/940845

 

[TurricanII]

I have seen this problem where Exchange 2007 was missing service packs and updates - are Exchange and 2003 server fully patched?

You might schedule a batch file to run 10 minutes after bootup with a load of NET START commands for the failing services.

NTFS errors could be an out of date RAID card driver. You probably need to run chkdsk /f a few times if the box has been rebooting. I'd also be reading the drives' SMART reports/manufacturer array management log and looking bad sectors or hard read/write errors.

It sounds like they are running on an old server and it might be time to update to new server hardware, SAS disks and newer Windows server software/Exchange on premise or Office 365..

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Holy Thread Resurrection! (notice date of original post)

 

[TurricanII]

Aaarrgghh! I normally check the dates!!

 

[Markverhyden]

LOL!!! I bit my tongue when I saw that earlier. But we all have made that mistake, myself included.

 

[Phil Coulson]

Ohh
I forgot to check dates!!