XCON: Troubleshooting Tips for: Exchange MTA Not Starting

MORE INFORMATION

The Microsoft Exchange MTA can fail to start due to three basic reasons as listed below:

• Not enough available hard disk space.
  
  
• The Microsoft Exchange MTA depends on another service which failed to start.
  
  
• Microsoft Exchange MTA database has corrupted data.

Each of these reasons and the work-around or fix is discussed below:

1. Not Enough Available Hard Disk Space

When the Microsoft Exchange MTA database disk has less than 10 megabyte (MB) remaining to be available, the MTA will shut down and a Field Engineering Event 9411 is added to the event log.

This problem may be solved in one of two ways:

• Stop all Microsoft Exchange Server services and free disk space on the hard disk used by the Microsoft Exchange MTA by deleting other files or moving them to another location. Restart the Exchange Server services afterwards.
  
  -or-
• Move the Microsoft Exchange MTA database to a location with more disk space by using the Microsoft Exchange Performance Optimizer (run it with the -v option and you can skip the step of analyzing the hard disks).

After restarting the Microsoft Exchange MTA, monitor its work queue. The work queue should go down; if it does not, use either the Microsoft Exchange Administrator program or Performance Monitor to find out which queue is backing up. Take whatever troubleshooting steps are necessary to correct the backed up queue.

2. Microsoft Exchange MTA Depends on Another Service Which Failed to Start

The Microsoft Exchange MTA depends on the Microsoft Exchange Directory service and the Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service. These two services must run for the Microsoft Exchange MTA service to start. If one of these services is not able to start, follow the troubleshooting steps to start them up.

3. Microsoft Exchange MTA Database Has Corrupted Data

If there is corruption in the Exchange MTA database then the Microsoft Exchange MTA service will not start. A fatal event will be logged in the Windows NT Event log by the Exchange MTA service. To fix the corruption in the Microsoft Exchange MTA database use the MTACHECK.EXE utility that exists in the \EXHSRVR\BIN sub-directory. To run the MTACHECK.EXE utility refer to the Utilities For Troubleshooting section in Chapter 17 of the Microsoft Exchange Administrator's Guide or the on-line Help in the Microsoft Exchange Administrator program.