Here is my sad story. I spent an entire Saturday trying to figure out where it all went wrong, and I never really did, but I did find a workaround…
I’ve been working on a new installation of SBS 2011, migrated from SBS 2003. This morning, I decided I should go ahead and manually run the psconfig as I was warned to do by the pop-up messages, and really had to do in order to get the backup facility to run properly (I had just stopped the Sharepoint services as a temporary workaround). I reset the SPF 2010 services back to automatic, started them and ran psconfig per instructions found here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/smallbusinessserver/thread/94c5f178-f020-4d0f-ba7c-11c415d0d862/
Then, after a reboot, I experienced the post psconfig "after the update service start issues" explained here:
OK, a link from the above (now a link below) had a choice of fixes, went for the fix-it from Microsoft (thought it was the safest way).
After rebooting again, I discovered the fix didn’t really work that well at all. Still having issues with the “Microsoft Exchange RPC Client Access” service not starting. This would just be annoying, but then I discovered to my complete dismay that the server was no longer receiving emails. They were bouncing with “unable to relay” message. I also discovered that the reverse DNS the SMTP service was returning was not what I had setup in the receive connector. OK, searched the web, not finding anything at all. I start getting worried, I have a very understanding customer, but not being able to receive email (and replying with those annoying NDR’s) isn’t good at all. After coming real close to calling Microsoft support and forking out the $$$$ for afterhours support, I started racking my brain. Decided to try something novel, I stopped all of the Exchange services and the SMTP service, then started all of the Exchange services, and started the SMTP service last. This did the trick!
Now I have to ask, why is this server not working unless the SMTP service start after the Exchange services? How can I fix it to boot up unassisted? I can’t help but think that the fix-it in question was the source of my new problem:
Fix-it I’m blaming is linked from this KB:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940845
Sorry for the long post, I hope this can help if this happens to someone else.
The question I really need answered:
Should I delay the start of SMTP? Or should I make the SMTP service dependent on one of the Exchange services?
Help would be nice.
Thanks,
Dave