[2silogik]

Hello everyone,

First post on this forum, and I must say, first real problem with our BES Express server (Small Business).

The setup is really simple, we have a single server, SBS 2003 where we installed BES Express / Small Business.

Everything was working fine, until yesterday.

I've installed Windows 2003 SP2, rebooted, all was fine.

Than I've installed the following patches :

KB921096
KB919029
KB925902
KB930178
KB931784
Windows Hotfix NLSDownlevelMapping
Windows Hotfix IDNMitigationAPIs
IE 7.0
KB932168
KB935966
KB931832
KB934041
KB934180
KB931906
KB927891
KB926505
KB933566
KB929123
KB935840
KB935839
KB936594
KB936357
KB933854
KB926122

Rebooted, and the server took 45mins + at the "Applying Computer Settings". I was able to access the log and most of the server ressource anyway, and found those entries :

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7044
Date: 7/16/2007
Time: 10:06:27 PM
User: N/A
Computer: LCNSBS01
Description:
The following service is taking more than 16 minutes to start and may be hung: BlackBerry Policy Service

Contact your system administrator or service vendor for approximate startup times for this service.

If you think this service might be slowing system response or logon time, talk to your system administrator about whether the service should be disabled until the problem is identified.

You may have to restart the computer in safe mode before you can disable the service.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at Events And Errors Message Center: Basic Search.


__________________________________________________ _________



Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7044
Date: 7/16/2007
Time: 10:06:27 PM
User: N/A
Computer: LCNSBS01
Description:
The following service is taking more than 16 minutes to start and may be hung: BlackBerry Dispatcher

Contact your system administrator or service vendor for approximate startup times for this service.

If you think this service might be slowing system response or logon time, talk to your system administrator about whether the service should be disabled until the problem is identified.

You may have to restart the computer in safe mode before you can disable the service.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at Events And Errors Message Center: Basic Search.


__________________________________________________ _________


So I rebooted, to see if it would fix things. Same problem.

Rebooted in Safe mode, disabled all the Blackberry services, and rebooted, the server was fine.

So it seems like one of the update is not too well managed by the "Policy" & "Dispatcher" services.

BES is version 4.1.3 (installed in late March).

As it's my first problem with the software, any ideas how I should react ?

Should I update the BES (if an update is available), can I even if the services are disabled ? Should I uninstall / reinstall ?

Please help me out. thanks.

[RyanWh]

Originally Posted by 2silogik

So I rebooted, to see if it would fix things. Same problem.

Rebooted in Safe mode, disabled all the Blackberry services, and rebooted, the server was fine.

So it seems like one of the update is not too well managed by the "Policy" & "Dispatcher" services.

BES is version 4.1.3 (installed in late March).

As it's my first problem with the software, any ideas how I should react ?

Should I update the BES (if an update is available), can I even if the services are disabled ? Should I uninstall / reinstall ?

Please help me out. thanks.

I had this same issue to the "T" of what you just explained. I have a standalone BES 4.1.0 on Enterprise Server 2003 and Exchange 2003, and we had the same problem after upgrading to Server 2003 SP2.

The BES seems to be working fine now, but we had to disable the Dispatcher Service and reboot the server.

If anyone has more information on this it would be helpful.

I am looking to install SP4 on BES, would that help? Or should I have already done the upgrade first?

[2silogik]

Disabling the dispatcher is ok ? It's not needed to get emails up to the Blackberry devices ?

I will try the update to SP4, but I'm still looking out to see if it's necessery to have the services running, not disabled, but doing the upgrade.

I'll keep you posted if this resolves any issues.

[hdawg]

huh? dispatcher is the heart of BES. You should upgrade to SP4 anyway.

do you have another domain controller?

[RyanWh]

Well I would have to agree that you probably need the dispatcher service to be running, but I plan on upgrading to SP4 soon anyways. I was just wondering if anyone knew what the deal was with upgrading the Windows Server 2003 to SP2 and these errors.

[hdawg]

Is there a special SBS version of SP2? I forget how those patches are distributed.

[2silogik]

The patch is the same at the standard SP2 for 2003. There is an extra patch tho, now released for the SBS "software" ... I've installed both at the same time so couldn't tell which one caused the problem.

[BlueSkyz]

I found that applying W2K3 SBS - SP2 to a BES server to be DISASTROUS. In fact I had to completely remove SP2 and then reinstall all hotfixes to restore normal operation. As an aside, I also found SP2 to just about wreck any network communications between a host system and VM's running under VMWare as well.

Your mileage may vary, but good luck!

[RyanWh]

^^^ I wouldn't go as far as stating that W2K3 SP2 will hose everything. I did have issues when first installing SP2 on our BES, but everything is running smooth right now. I know I don't have Small Business, but we have SP2 on every server we have and haven't ran into very many issues. We also don't run VMWare to my knowledge, so I can't say anything about that.