Exchange System Attendant Service not starting after backup

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Pieter Hendriks - 20 Oct 2005 10:00 GMT

Hello everyone,

I am a system-engineer for an SBS-2000 Server with Exchange on it.
Every now and then after the back-up-job is finished the server hangs and i
have to preform a cold reboot.

What happens.... every night at 02:00 we preform a back-up with
ARCServe2000, before the back-up starts we run a exchstop.bat and after the
backup we run a exchstart.bat (both files with net stop and net start
commands.)
After the cold reboot it looks like everything is going right but after
aprox 14 days the same problem re-occurs.

The event-viewer for the system reports :

- The Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service failed to start due to the
following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request
in a timely fashion.

After that the rest of the exchange-services can't start and the cliënts
can't login.
The only solution is to reboot the server.

Does anybody have a solution to this problem ???

Reply to this Message

Cris Hanna [SBS-MVP] - 20 Oct 2005 17:58 GMT

is ArcServ not Exchange Aware??

could your batch file not be taking into account service dependencies??? (need to stop one before you stop another?)

Signature

Cris Hanna [SBS-MVP]
-------------------------------------------------
Please do not email me directly for assistance. Reply only in the Newsgroups for the benefit of everyone

Hello everyone,

I am a system-engineer for an SBS-2000 Server with Exchange on it.
Every now and then after the back-up-job is finished the server hangs and i
have to preform a cold reboot.

What happens.... every night at 02:00 we preform a back-up with
ARCServe2000, before the back-up starts we run a exchstop.bat and after the
backup we run a exchstart.bat (both files with net stop and net start
commands.)
After the cold reboot it looks like everything is going right but after
aprox 14 days the same problem re-occurs.

The event-viewer for the system reports :

- The Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service failed to start due to the
following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request
in a timely fashion.

After that the rest of the exchange-services can't start and the clints
can't login.
The only solution is to reboot the server.

Does anybody have a solution to this problem ???

Reply to this Message

Pieter Hendriks - 21 Oct 2005 07:28 GMT

> is ArcServ not Exchange Aware??
>
[quoted text clipped - 24 lines]
>
> Does anybody have a solution to this problem ???

Reply to this Message

Cris Hanna [SBS-MVP] - 21 Oct 2005 21:47 GMT

I'm not a big scripting guy
But perhaps you might be better to stop each idividual Exchange in your Bat file, rather than relying on SA to shut down all the others.

Signature

Cris Hanna [SBS-MVP]
-------------------------------------------------
Please do not email me directly for assistance. Reply only in the Newsgroups for the benefit of everyone

Cris,

First of all, Thank you for your reply.

This ArcServe version is a standard version (not a exchange premium add-on
exchange agent) so we have to make a full back-up of the database (priv1.edb).

This is the procedure i use :

Before the backup starts we run EXCHSTOP.BAT (ARCServe runs it):

Net Stop msexchangesa /y

After the back-up is completed we run EXCHSTART.BAT :

NET START MSEXCHANGESA

NET START MSEXCHANGEIS

rem NET START MSEXCHANGEDS

NET START MSEXCHANGEMTA

rem NET START MSEXCHANGEIMC

Normally everything goes right but once in a while the problem occurs as i
described.

Thanks for your answer in advance.

Pieter Hendriks

"Cris Hanna [SBS-MVP]" wrote:

> is ArcServ not Exchange Aware??
>
> could your batch file not be taking into account service dependencies??? (need to stop one before you stop another?)
>
> --
> Cris Hanna [SBS-MVP]
> -------------------------------------------------
> Please do not email me directly for assistance. Reply only in the Newsgroups for the benefit of everyone
> "Pieter Hendriks" <PieterHendriks@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:E0774077-629C-4675-BBA8-1E115B3F195E@microsoft.com...
> Hello everyone,
>
> I am a system-engineer for an SBS-2000 Server with Exchange on it.
> Every now and then after the back-up-job is finished the server hangs and i
> have to preform a cold reboot.
>
> What happens.... every night at 02:00 we preform a back-up with
> ARCServe2000, before the back-up starts we run a exchstop.bat and after the
> backup we run a exchstart.bat (both files with net stop and net start
> commands.)
> After the cold reboot it looks like everything is going right but after
> aprox 14 days the same problem re-occurs.
>
> The event-viewer for the system reports :
>
> - The Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service failed to start due to the
> following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request
> in a timely fashion.
>
> After that the rest of the exchange-services can't start and the clints
> can't login.
> The only solution is to reboot the server.
>
> Does anybody have a solution to this problem ???
>

Reply to this Message

Pieter Hendriks - 22 Oct 2005 08:46 GMT

Chris,

With stopping the services everything goes right, it's with starting the
services after the back-up.

> I'm not a big scripting guy
> But perhaps you might be better to stop each idividual Exchange in your Bat file, rather than relying on SA to shut down all the others.
[quoted text clipped - 66 lines]
> > Does anybody have a solution to this problem ???
> >

Reply to this Message

Kathy - 22 Oct 2005 18:07 GMT

You aren't stopping smtp, etc, although technically you only need to
dismount the stores (stop the IS) for an offline backup.

net start "Microsoft Exchange System Attendant" net start "Microsoft
Exchange Event" net start "Microsoft Exchange IMAP4" net start "Microsoft
Exchange MTA Stacks" net start "Microsoft Exchange POP3" net start
"Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine"This is the list of services to be
stopped (and started again)

net stop MSExchangeMGMT /yes
net stop RESvc /yes
net stop POP3Svc /yes
net stop IMAP4Svc /yes
net stop NntpSvc /yes
net stop SMTPSVC /yes
net stop MSExchangeES /yes
net stop MSExchangeIS /yes
net stop MSExchangeMTA /yes
net stop MSExchangeSA /yesI hope you are remembering to backup the priv1.stm
and the logs and well as the edb (no public folders?).

Also remember that your logs won't be getting purged until you reboot -
that could be the problem. And an offline backup doesn't check the store
for corruption.

Also check that you are not backing up the M: drive or virus checking the
store or M: drive - that can cause problems.

You could use ntbackup to do a online backup of Exchange (see
http://www.msexchange.org/articles/MF020.html) - or pray that you never have
to restore your offline backup!. See
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=296788

HTH

Kathy

> Chris,
>
[quoted text clipped - 71 lines]
> > > Does anybody have a solution to this problem ???
> > >

Reply to this Message

Kevin Rains - 25 Oct 2005 18:44 GMT

I think Kathy hit the nail on the head when she mentioned using NTBackup to
backup Exchange. You can then use ArcServe to backup the backup.

Kevin

> You aren't stopping smtp, etc, although technically you only need to
> dismount the stores (stop the IS) for an offline backup.
[quoted text clipped - 124 lines]
> > > > Does anybody have a solution to this problem ???
> > > >

Reply to this Message