Exchange 2007 services not starting

If you find that after restarting a server running Exchange 2007 - some critical services are not starting automatically and you have to manually start the Information Store and others - it could be a service startup dependency issue.

 

This is the dependency list for Exchange 2007 that starts up without any problem:

 

AD Topology

Depends on:

    NTDS (AD Domain Services)

 

The following need to start after AD Topology:

Anti-Spam

Edge Sync

File Distribution

IMAP 4

Mail Submission

Mailbox Assistants

POP3

Replication Service

Search Indexer

Service Host

System Attendant

Transport

Transport Log Service

 

Information Store

Depends on:

    System Attendant

    RPC

    Server

    Workstation

    Windows Event Log

 

System Attendant

Depends on:

    RPC

    Server

    Workstation

    Windows Event Log

 

Monitoring

Does not depend on anything

 

If this is setup as above the Exchange should startup normally. If problems still persist you could have a GPO that calls a script that starts the troublesome services manually.