SBS 2011 Hangs On Applying Settings And Exchange Services Will Not Start
IT Problem
This issue came up recently, a client had installed SBS 2011 and the system was functioning fine.
The client had made a few changes so needed a reboot of the system. When he rebooted the system the SBS 2011 server was sat at applying settings for over an hour. I connected to the services of the server remotely and found that the reason it was sitting there was that it was waiting for the exchange services to start, namely the the Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service and the Information Store where hung in a starting state.
Digging around on the web was futile and i tried numerous things. Eventually I found the issue, the client for whatever reason had disabled IPV6 as he presumed he did not need it.
IT Solution
To fix the issue in the end it was very simple, I rebooted the server into safe mode, not safe mode with networking as that had the same issue. Once in there I went to the network card settings and put a tick in TCPIP Version 6. Applied the settings then rebooted the server. The server came up clean in a matter of moments and all issues where fixed. The problem arose because Microsoft Exchange 2010 requires IPV6 for communicating the with the SBS 2011 server. Disabling IPV6 means none of the exchange 2010 services can start correctly.
Moral of the story is DO NOT DISABLE IPV6 on SBS2011
Tags: SBS2011
Loading ...
Mat
| #
Just for the benefit of anyone else reading this post
We have the same issue and resolved it using the following link as we were using ESET Nod32
http://kb.eset.com/esetkb/index?page=content&id=SOLN2567
also IPV6 can be uninstalled, but removing the tick from the network properties is not the way to do this, that just unbinds it and will break Exchange.
more info can be found here, is is for 2008 but is the same on 2011
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852
Reply
Allen White
| #
Cheers for the input matt 🙂
Reply
Allen White
| #
Glad to help! please share the article on Facebook and Google!
Reply
Dee Patel
| #
Fantastic this worked like a dream. Only difference is you have to log into safe mode with networking to see the network controller options. If you log in as Safemode only then you CAN NOT enable the IPV6 as its not present in the control panel.
Reply
Jamie
| #
I’m glad I located your post. I was chasing this issue for a bit today and a simple checkbox was the issue. Many thanks for posting this.
Reply
Robert Chasmer
| #
Thanks so much for this. Had a dead SBS machine, all because I turned of IPv6 while debugging something.
Re-enabled while in safe mode (with networking) machine works again!
Reply