Hello everyone, I am in the process of migrating an Exchange 2000 organisation to Exchange 2007 but experiencing problems with services not starting on the Exchange 2007 server. The Exchange 2007 server is running the following roles: Hub Transport, Client Access and Mailbox. After boot only the following services are running: MS Exchange Active Directory Topology Service, MS Exchange Information Store, MS Exchange System Attendant, MS Exchange Transport. The following (auto start) services fail to start at boot: MS Exchange Anti-spam Update, MS Exchange EdgeSync, MS Exchange File Distribution, MS Exchange Mail Submission, MS Exchange Mailbox Assistants, MS Exchange Replication Service, MS Exchange Search Indexer, MS Exchange Service Host, MS Exchange Transport Log Search. For each of the services which fail to start at boot there are 2 entries in the System event log: Event ID 7009 (Timeout waiting for the [service name] service to connect) and Event ID 7000 (The [service name] service failt to start due to the following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.). What is interesting is that I can manually successfully start the failed services after the machine has booted fully and I logon as an admin. The infrastructure meets all the Exchange 2007 requirements:Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard SP2 64bit domain controllers with the domain and forest functional level running at 'Windows Server 2003' level. DCs are also Global Catalogs. The Exchange 2007 server is running Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard SP2 64bit with all latest patches, Exchange 2007 has Update Rollup 5 installed. All hardware and storage is well over required spec. I have read through the MS Knowledge base and in particular paid attention to KB 940845 (the server is not an DC or a GC but I still added the dependencies to the services) & 936541 (doesn't apply) & 555859 (added dependency). The server and the Exchange organisation pass the the Exchange 2007 Best Practice Analyzer with the only outstanding critical issue the fact the new Exchange 2007 server's public folder database has yet to have a full backup take place. Nothing I have done so far has been successful in getting all the auto start MS Exchange services to start on boot. Obviously there is something different in the state of the server during boot compared to after booting which is preventing the services from starting at boot. There is no indication in any event log which may shed light on the reason why the services are failing to start at boot. I find this extremely disappointing from what is supposed to be 'enterprise' class software. Obviously there is inadequate error handling written into the services. Can anyone help me fix this issue? I hope so! :-)Thanks in advance for your time reading this post and for any assistance you can provide. Regards, Ken.

Many people are having issues with Rollup 5 for Exchange 2007 Uninstall that update and install Rollup 4 for Exchange 2007 Deli

Hi Deli, Thankyou for pointing me on the correct track, I have solved the problem (for the meantime) based on your advice. In my particular case neither Update Rollup 5 nor Update Rollup 4 would work. Update Rollup 3 works fine and all services set to automatically run at boot do so with Rollup 3 installed. This leads me feeling less than confident in Microsoft's quality testing on these rollup patches. It also has me scratching my head as to why there isn't documentation warning customers of these problems. It is saddening that Microsoft have such little regard for their customers. I am now in the situation where I need to duplicate the Exchange server hardware and configuration exactly in a test environment to test out all Exchange 2007 patches. Our current test environment does not duplicate the production Exchange environment hardware exactly but it appears that this is required. So much for Microsoft's claims of reduced total cost of ownership - we now have to double our hardware costs to reduce the risks offaulty Microsoft patches preventing key service delivery. Anyway thanks Deli - you have answered my original question. Regards, Ken.

We raised a paid for support case with Microsoft on this issue and have diagnosed and resolved the problem. To assist other Exchange 2007 users I'm posting the solution here. The reason why some customers experience service startup problem's similar to that described above is due to a problem with .Net Framework code signature authentication. A lot (most? /all ?) of Exchange 2007 executables are .Net Framework 2.0 managed code. These executables are signed to prevent malicious code modifications. For whatever reason the .Net framework is taking too long to authenticate the code signatures for many of the (Rollup 4 & 5) service executablesat boot time causing their startup to fail. See KB936707 for details on the .Net Framework problem. There is a hotfix available but it can only be obtained through Microsoft Support. It is not publicly available on the website. After applying the .Net Framework hotfix referred to in KB936707 and also modifying the .config files for each of the Exchange 2007 services as per the article, all the services started at boot time. This fixed the service startup problem we experienced with Rollup 4 and Rollup 5. Microsoft refunded the support fee for the incident since it was covered under the free support 'bug' clause.

I had the exact same problem with the services not starting automatically. The fix is to add or modify this key. Method 3: Configure the Service Control Manager (SCM) time-out value Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall the operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.Increase the default time-out value for the SCM in the registry. To do this, follow these steps: 1. Start Registry Editor. 2. Change the value data for the ServicesPipeTimeout DWORD value to 60000 in the Control subkey. To do this, follow these steps: a. Click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet b. Click the Control registry subkey. c. Right-click the ServicesPipeTimeout DWORD value, and then click Modify. d. Click Decimal. e. Type 60000, and then click OK. 3. If the ServicesPipeTimeout value is not available, add the new DWORD value, and then set its value data to 60000 in the Control registry subkey. To do this, follow these steps: a. Click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet. b. Click the Control registry subkey. c. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value. d. Type ServicesPipeTimeout, and then press ENTER. e. Right-click the ServicesPipeTimeout DWORD value, and then click Modify. f. Click Decimal. g. Type 60000, and then click OK. Note The value 60000 milliseconds equals 60 seconds.This change does not take effect until you restart the computer. After you increase the ServicesPipeTimeout value in the registry, the SCM waits for the services to use the whole ServicesPipeTimeout value before the System log reports that the service did not start.If the services require several minutes to start, a value of 60 seconds may be insufficient. Therefore, increase the ServicesPipeTimeout value to give the services sufficient time to start.

Transport hangs starting no matter what I do and this is a CLEAN virgin Windows 2008 system and first thing I try to install is Exchaneg 2007. Exchaneg 2007 is by far one of the worst tested and most quirky apps MS has released in some time, hard to beleive this is a mission critical backend infrastructure product!! The dev team shodul be FIRED along with the QA team!!

I have to agree. This is shockingly poor QA, it's not as if the problem is hidden, it happens out of the box.1/10 could do much better. Thus far Ex2007 has been fraught with problems.

To solve my problem on a VM ESXi I need to put 120000 ms to the registry key :HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ServicesPipeTimeout

I made the changes and it worked although I had to actually gonti my services area and start the service. I am able to send from 2007 but cannot send from 2003. any Ideas on that?

Sorry I menat to say I can send from 2007 and get the email in a 2003 enviroment but when I send from a 2003 enviroment and then check the 2007 account there is no email coming through.