Question

Exchange 2003 MTA Stack service won't start

Asked by: matheson

Hey all, here's my config....

Windows 2003 enterprise - Exchange 2003 enterprise,
2003 ad domain connected to an NT4 domain...

My installs of Exchange 2003 and ADC worked grand but the Mta stack service won't start on any of my exchange 2003 servers?
When i try to manually start it is says it started but stopped again because it was not doing anything...

Here are the errors in from the event log:

Product: Exchange
ID: 9405
Source: MSExchangeMTA
Version: 6.0
Component: Message Transfer Agent
Symbolic Name: MTA09405
Message: An unexpected error has occurred which may cause the MTA to terminate. Error: {error code}. [{value}{value}{value}] (16)

roduct: Exchange
ID: 137
Source: MSExchangeMTA
Version: 6.5.0000.0
Message: A fatal directory error occurred. Change to the maximum logging level for more details. [valuevaluevaluevalue] (16)

Product: Exchange
ID: 9406
Source: MSExchangeMTA
Version: 6.0
Component: Message Transfer Agent
Symbolic Name: MTA09406
Message: There is not enough Performance Monitor memory to display the MTA Connections information. Stop attached Performance Monitors and re-start the MTA. [{value}{value}{value}] (14)


Any help would be extreemly appreciated as i cannot find any documents relating to this.

Thanks,

Matt

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Asked On
2004-01-20 at 06:24:13ID20856449
Tags

mta

,

exchange

,

start

,

stacks

,

2003

Topic

Exchange Email Server

Participating Experts
4
Points
300
Comments
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Answers

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-20 at 07:12:02ID: 10155340

Increasing the points I am needing help and stuff

 

by: Mob-bomPosted on 2004-01-20 at 07:39:53ID: 10155556

Hi matheson

Do you have at 10MB of free space or more?  If not, the MTA shuts itself down automatically.

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-20 at 07:41:23ID: 10155567

36gb on the system drive and 176gb on the data drive

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-20 at 07:42:06ID: 10155574

sorry thats all free space

 

by: Mob-bomPosted on 2004-01-20 at 08:13:31ID: 10155792

Do you have the acutal data for >>> Error: {error code}. [{value}{value}{value}] (16) ?

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-20 at 08:29:21ID: 10155932

An unexpected error has occurred which may cause the MTA to terminate.  Error: Init Routing API returned error -1073478776. [BASE MAIN BASE 1] (16)

 

by: Mob-bomPosted on 2004-01-20 at 08:32:53ID: 10155974

and the other two error message data values?

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-20 at 08:36:10ID: 10156013

A fatal directory error occurred. Change to the maximum logging level for more details. [MTA MAIN BASE 1 12] (16)

For more information, click http://www.microsoft.com/contentredirect.asp.

there are only 2 error msgs,

There are a load of warnings saying that the MTA service had not shut down proberly, cleaning the mta database, database cleaned, starting mta then those two errors and then this warning:

There is not enough Performance Monitor memory to display the MTA Connections information.  Stop attached Performance Monitors and re-start the MTA. [BASE MAIN BASE 1] (14)

 

by: Mob-bomPosted on 2004-01-20 at 08:39:36ID: 10156044

Hey Matt, two more questions.

Do you have a private store set?
Does the Microsoft Exchange directory service start and stay up?

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-20 at 08:50:25ID: 10156160

the default private information store...
D:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.edb

there is no
Microsoft Exchange directory service
There's an Active Directory Connector Service and that is started without errors.

 

by: Mob-bomPosted on 2004-01-20 at 08:55:55ID: 10156218

My last idea :(  

XCON: Deleting the MTA from a Routing Group in Active Directory Can Result in MTA Not Starting
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;247130&Product=exchange

If that isn't it, I hope someone else can help!

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-20 at 08:58:48ID: 10156246

that looks correct, but there is no resolve!

thanks for your efforts though!

 

by: KidegoPosted on 2004-01-20 at 09:41:43ID: 10156682

If you create a mailbox in 2003, can you send mail to the 5.5 server? Does 5.5 have any problem sending to any mailbox on 2003?

D

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-20 at 09:50:49ID: 10156757

im just checking now, something else i just noticed my outlook web acces isn't working!

 

by: KidegoPosted on 2004-01-20 at 09:56:46ID: 10156815

OWA will only work for 2003 users on 2003, and 5.5 OWA cannot contact a 2003 mailbox.

d

 

by: KidegoPosted on 2004-01-20 at 09:58:17ID: 10156827

Did you change the routing group or storage group name after the ADC install?

d

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-20 at 10:07:42ID: 10156907

no didn't change anything

kidego:OWA will only work for 2003 users on 2003, and 5.5 OWA cannot contact a 2003 mailbox

i know that i have an administrator account on ex2003 but i cannot connect to owa on http://server/exchweb/bin/auth/owalogon.asp on my front end server

 

by: KidegoPosted on 2004-01-20 at 10:11:13ID: 10156941

that's a different issue. get on the console of the 2003 BE, and go to http://localhost/exchange

Is message tracking enabled on the 2003 server? If so, turn it off, and restart the 2003 Exchange services (just a test)

D

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-20 at 10:16:35ID: 10157005

it just says the page cannot be found!

 

by: KidegoPosted on 2004-01-20 at 10:27:07ID: 10157091

then IIS could be broken. Are all teh virtual directories showing as up? If so, go into IIS, click the Exchange virtual dir, and then browse. It should ask you for credentials.

What about mailflow between the 5.5 and 2003 servers?

D

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-20 at 10:28:31ID: 10157104

i just Realised there is 2 Internet Mail SMTP Connections In The Exchange 5.5 Administrator That Aren't Showing in System Manager,

These Connections belong to 2 Servers that were there previously from an old exchange 2003 Install, But I cannot delete them from exchange 5.5 because It gives me an invalid handle error, And they are not shown in the connections/routing groups of exchange 2003.

Is there anywhere where i can manually delete them.?

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-20 at 10:29:32ID: 10157113

I have no mailflow at all - No MTA!

No the folders are not showing up under IIS

 

by: KidegoPosted on 2004-01-20 at 10:38:23ID: 10157199

wait...on the Exchange 2003 server, you have no exchange virtual dirs under IIS, is that what you're telling me? And 2 orphaned connectors showing in the 5.5 admin, that belonged to 2 other Exchange 2003 servers previously installed?

Maybe you should give the full details of how we got to this spot, cause there's a lot going on that wasn't told in this thread.

D

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-20 at 10:51:12ID: 10157330

Ok here we go.....

A while back we did a test install of exchange 2003, everything worked perfectly but the managers didn't like the configuration. So we uninstalled it. Now while we were uninstalling it one of the servers in atlanta was offline (unknown to us) and had the information of the 2003 connections in it. We fininshed uninstalling 2003 and ADC and everything was grand.

So we left it for a while to make sure everything was ok. Then we proceded to do our next text upgrade. But I noticed that there were the two orphaned connections due to the ofline Exchange 5.5 Server Replicating Back into The site, I thought Ex2003 would fix this during the ORGPREP part of the installation, but I guess I was wrong.

So now We have Installed -

In the NT 4 Domain:
6 x Exchange 5.5 Servers

In the Active Directory Domain:
2 x Back End Exchange 2003 Enterprise Servers (Windows 2003 Enterprise Server)(one has Active Directory Connector Installed)
1 x Front End Exchange 2003 Server (Windows Server 2003 Standard)
1 x Active Directory Domain Controller seperate to the one of the EX2003 Servers.

All of the user replication seems to be ok, I can move mailboxes etc,
but i moved my own mailbox today and I could log on etc but I could not send/recieve mails, neither from internal or external sources.

I followed it up by checking all of the MTA que's and noticed the The MTA Stack Service was not working on any of my ex2003 servers.

Now we are here,
Also just noticing that the IIS section is not working!

Should I just Uninstall and try again from scratch???

 

by: KidegoPosted on 2004-01-20 at 11:28:52ID: 10157739

No, not scratch...not yet anyway. If you're familiar with ADSIedit, I think we can remove those connectors from AD, if they're showing in there. you have ADSIedit loaded? Windows support tools...on the CD

D

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-21 at 02:08:00ID: 10163378

no they're not on the active directory side!
only on the exchaneg 5.5 - NT4 Side

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-01-21 at 02:10:15ID: 10163401

kidego, sent you an email

 

by: thrawn99Posted on 2004-02-20 at 06:07:18ID: 10412309

Hi, I am having this EXACT same issue.....please let me know if there ever was a resolution.

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-02-20 at 06:30:33ID: 10412544

i started from scratch with a lot of help from kidego (thanks man! were live now!)

I completly rebuilt my domain and exchange systems, making sure to format them completly,

Also I checked every mailbox and made sure that each one had its own  individual nt 4 account which matched the exchange 5.5 alias.

from then on everything went by the book.

Use the Exchange 2003 deployment and administration guide from microsoft.

they can be found here:

Deployment Guide:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/Exchange2003/proddocs/library/DepGuide.asp

Admin Guide:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/Exchange2003/proddocs/library/DepGuide.asp

thanks,

Matt

 

by: thrawn99Posted on 2004-02-20 at 07:09:08ID: 10412900

thanks for the quick response....so you're burned the entire environment?

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-02-20 at 07:11:09ID: 10412919

yeah it was really pi**ing me off!

 

by: KidegoPosted on 2004-02-20 at 07:25:51ID: 10413085

congrats, Matt. So thrawn99, what happened that your environment got whacked like this? This was such an extreme issue, did something similar happen?

D

 

by: thrawn99Posted on 2004-02-20 at 07:28:37ID: 10413111

Well same thing...everything else works perfectly, adc is fine...just this box. I am having the same issue though, IIS seems hosed and no MTA.

 

by: KidegoPosted on 2004-02-20 at 07:32:23ID: 10413161

Did it ever work? If so, when did it break?

D

 

by: thrawn99Posted on 2004-02-20 at 08:01:42ID: 10413474

no it neither the mta or iis ever worked, totally pristine enviroment

 

by: thrawn99Posted on 2004-02-20 at 10:04:33ID: 10414713

Ok, I found my solution without having to destroy the environment... I re FORESTPREP'd and DomainPrep'd and all worked fine, both IIS and the MTA....Hooray!

 

by: KidegoPosted on 2004-02-20 at 10:56:11ID: 10415148

lol! YAY!!! congrats....

D

 

by: mathesonPosted on 2004-02-23 at 01:40:38ID: 10430681

wish i had found that!!!

 

by: davidneesenPosted on 2009-04-16 at 14:38:52ID: 24162925

Workiing on our Front-End 2003 Exchange box after numerous hours with MS support...
Performing the various trouble shooting tasks such as:
1) Uninstall and reinstall "SMTP service" per KB840469
2) Uninstall and reinstall entire IIS service via Windows Component
3) Reinstal Exchange 2003 on the Front End
4) Apply Exchange SP2
the quick and simple fix for our circumstance, for starting the MS MTA Stacks service, was to create a dummy Mail Store within the First Administrative Group (on the Front-End server) called "Test"
Once this store was mounted (no mailboxes created), the MTA Service Stacks service was started, and stayed ON!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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