The IIS 6.0 service refuses to start

[Tyran]

Hi, running IIS 6.0 on SBS 2003, all software/security
updates are installed and up-to-date as far as I am aware.

Basically the server was running happily until I moved it
to its final location today. Upon booting the IIS failed
to start throwing an error of '-2146893818'. This is
obviously affecting virtually all the server functions
that my company uses!

I am at a complete loss as to what could have happened and
how to correct it. Any ideas please?

[doug]

What's the complete, exact error? You have to look in
your event logs...

doug

>.
>

[Jacqueline Jaynes [MSFT]]

Are you getting this error when you try to start the IIS Admin service?
Any errors in the system event log? This sounds like a corrupted metabase.

Thank you,

Jackie Jaynes [MSFT]
Microsoft IIS
Jack...@online.microsoft.com

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
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[David Wang [Msft]]

Whenever you see "large negative error codes", you should automatically
convert it into hex -- that's one way that error codes work.

That error code corresponds to:
-2146893818 = 0x80090006

Doing a search on 0x80090006 pulls up several suggestions. Please look them
over yourself and see if anything applies.
- Some of them point to corrupted files, which is a possibility given
physical server transport.
- Others suggest crypto decryption failure, which may happen if you lose the
encryption key that IIS uses.

Did you just install SBS2003, or did you do something like Sysprep or other
"system wrapping" steps after initial SBS installation.

And what service is failing to start? W3SVC? IISADMIN? The event log
should contain details on service start failures.

--
//David
IIS

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

//
"Tyran" <car...@dcprint.co.uk> wrote in message
news:0b6001c49a75$abd91bc0$7d02...@phx.gbl...

[Tyran]

My apolgies for the lack of information in my first post, I'm very new to the
SBS2003 OS and haven't been involved with issues this complex as yet.

The server was purchased from Dell (1600SC) preinstalled with the OS. Our
supplier then setup the system to run the application we were purchasing from
them (primarily SQL Server), I simply went through the Server Management
checklist afterwards loading on my users.

The system has been running for 4 months without any serious problems apart
from the tape archiving (wrong drive supplied). Unfortunately the last backup
failed to complete.

The service IISADMIN now fails to start when Windows opens.

I don't know how to include a log file on here so I have just pasted in the
following from the event log:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: DCOM
Event Category: None
Event ID: 10010
Date: 15/09/2004
Time: 08:41:57
User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Computer: DCPCSERVER
Description:
The server {A9E69610-B80D-11D0-B9B9-00A0C922E750} did not register with DCOM
within the required timeout.

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7035
Date: 15/09/2004
Time: 08:42:00
User: dcprintdesign\Administrator
Computer: DCPCSERVER
Description:
The IIS Admin Service service was successfully sent a start control.

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7036
Date: 15/09/2004
Time: 08:42:00
User: N/A
Computer: DCPCSERVER
Description:
The IIS Admin Service service entered the stopped state.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7024
Date: 15/09/2004
Time: 08:42:00
User: N/A
Computer: DCPCSERVER
Description:
The IIS Admin Service service terminated with service-specific error
2148073478 (0x80090006).

I hope this gives more insight into whats going on. I have installed
IISSTATE (as suggested from other postings) but this will obviously only
report when the service is up and running.

[David Wang [Msft]]

Oh, IISADMIN is not starting up with that error. That is not a good sign.

I have seen 0x80090006 errors a few times before, and they've all related to
a Cryptography key used by IIS that was missing/invalid. IISADMIN uses that
key to encrypt sensitive things stored in its configuration (such as
username/password for the anonymous user identity, UNC access identity,
etc). If the key is wrong, IIS ends up being unable to decrypt several
critical parts of the metabase and can then fail to start up.

There are some issues when using Sysprep (which SBS does use in some
situations) since it can intentionally delete/recreate the Cryptography key
(rendering the previous information irrecoverable). Or maybe you were
somehow unfortunate that the key was corrupted during server transport.

I think you want to call Microsoft Product Support to verify (my suspicion
is that you'll probably have to reinstall IIS along with everything else
running on IIS -- so that a new Crypto key is generated and used
consistently with the encrypted data). However, this should not wipe out
your data related to Exchange nor SQL -- only their web-enabled parts -- but
please take appropriate caution to back you your own data/databases.

--
//David
IIS
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
//

"Tyran" <Ty...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:76EC91BC-4C4B-4786...@microsoft.com...

[Tyran]

Cheers David, I had a funny feeling that I was looking at the worst case
here. I have already done a full ASR backup in preperation, guess I will need
to upset a few users after all :)

Thanks for the advice everyone.