help needed: BES services not starting after exchange server crash

[besnewb]

Hello everyone,
I am hoping that someone can help me resolve issues that we have with our windows 2003 exchange server, loaded with BES 4.1 (I believe). The blackberry services won't run now.
I recently took over administration of this server and am new to Microsoft Exchange and BES, so I'm trying to learn about these as quickly as possible.

Here's what happened:
The server froze one morning, and couldn't be accessed at all directly or through remote desktop. The only option was to do a power off on the machine. Upon reboot, there were a number of errors in exchange and none of the blackberry services would start up. Long story short, after replacing a dll (jcb.dll) that a lot of errors were pointing to with a fresh copy from the win 2003 server CD, and doing a repair on the exchange database, we've been able to get exchange services running properly with mailbox stores and public folders available again.

However, the following is still happening:

- event log shows errors in MSExchangeAL with event ID 8231
Permanent failure reported by policy group provider for 'CN=Recipient Policies,CN=Name,CN=MicrosoftExchange,CN=Services, CN=Configuration,DC=Name,DC=com':'MAD.EXE', error=8000ffff. Taking provider offline.

just recently, we discovered that one of our domain controllers, which is also our primary DNS, ran out of virtual memory and had already crashed before the exchange server did. The computer was unresponsive so I rebooted it but haven't had time to verify whether its services are running properly yet. I'm wondering if this could have something to do with the exchange server problems.

At the same time, the following BES services are popping up error windows saying that they've encountered an error and can't run: controller, dispatcher and router

Trying to start them manually still fails, so our blackberry users can't view or interact with their exchange calendars on their devices now. This is the main feature we use BES for.

As I don't know much about exchange and BES (yet), would greatly appreciate if anyone can provide insight and/or point me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance!

[GlenB]

The first question I would ask is whether the Exchange server is running correctly - ignoring BES for the moment. The error you list is an Exchange error. Set all BES services to manual, reboot exchange, do you still see those errors. If so, deal with those before anything else.

[GlenB]

A quick google of your error message suggests that your global catalogue server (probably the DC that had problems) isnt working correctly....

Event ID 8231 Source MSExchangeAL

[besnewb]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.
I think the domain controller machine is working ok now. DNS service is running and works. Also ran exbp best practices analyzer on the server and it was able to detect global catalogue on the domain controller (though not sure that means it's actually working).

Users can interact with their calendars on exchange server with no problems.

And now msexchangeAL is giving different errors after the DC started running again:

event ID 8260
Could not open LDAP session to directory 'dc1.xxxx.xxx.xx' using local service credentials. Cannot access Address List configuration information. Make sure the server 'dc1.xxxx.xxx.xx' is running. DC=xx,DC=xxxx,DC=xxx,DC=xx

event id 8026
LDAP Bind was unsuccessful on directory dc1.xxxx.xxx.xx for distinguished name ''. Directory returned error:[0x34] Unavailable. DC=xx,DC=xxxx,DC=xxx,DC=xx

Also, I noticed that if I try to run blackberry server configuration, nothing happens. The mouse pointer turns into an hourglass for a second and then nothing comes up.

The only other errors are if I try to start the blackberry services manually - still getting 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

Any ideas on what to try next?

[GlenB]

I still think you need to resolve any AD/Exchange related errors before looking at the BES services - BES relies heavily on these services so is likely to fail if you have problems with AD/Exchange.

A quick google of the first error you mention brings up this MS KB272552