Configuring service recovery options in Windows Server 2000

[Ben]

Hello all

We have a Windows 2000 Server running a mail scanning application. It's
generally pretty reliable but seems to crash now and then - if it
crashes we don't often notice for some time, meaning we get huge mail
queues. If it does crash we need to restart the services in a specific
order to get things up and running again.

So, I've written a batch file to do exactly that. I also looked at the
Recovery tab of the service and for all failures I've set it to run a
file which is my batch file.

I initiall tried just entering the file name (eg, d:\recover.bat) but
that didn't work. I since discovered that you nede to use "forcedos.exe
d:\recover.bat". Quite what forcedos is about or why you need it I'm not
sure.

Anyway, it's just not working. When the service fails, as it does now
and again we get...


The service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The
following corrective action will be taken in 0 milliseconds: Run the
configured recovery program.

Then we get...

The Service Control Manager tried to take a corrective action (Run the
configured recovery program) after the unexpected termination of the
MailMarshal Engine service, but this action failed with the following
error:
The system cannot find the file specified.

The path of the recovery file is DEFINITELY correct. I was wondering if
anyone could advise me as to how to get this working.

Thanks in advance

Ben

 

[Ben]

Me again

Do you often find that you try and sort something out for ages, finally
give up and post it on a forum then, just after you've posted, you find
the solution?

Well, I've found it here - http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=247929

Guess it must have been me not looking hard enough.