Problem:
Can't connect to OWA or the Exchange Management Console/Shell on our Exchange 2010 server (Server 2008R2 VM).
Background:
We have an Exchange 2010 VM (ESXi 5.1) we're "in the process" of doing a mail migration to (from Exchange 2003). We're currently in a co-existence situation, and not actively migrating users, though we have a small number on the Exchange 2010 server at the moment.
We had a recent "incident" that caused our ESXi host to go down, and since that time, OWA has been non-functional – clients see either a connection time out trying to connect to OWA, or a 500 error after logging in (we now run OWA off the Exchange 2010 server, and redirect to the Exchange 2003 server for everyone who's still on the older server), and going in to open up the Exchange Management Console or Shell errors out.
Error Information:
When opening the Exchange Management Shell, we get the below:
Connecting to remote server failed with the following error message : The WinRM client cannot process the request. It cannot determine the content type of the HTTP response from the destination computer. The content type is absent or invalid. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.
+ CategoryInfo : OpenError: (System.Manageme....RemoteRunspace:RemoteRunspace) [], PSRemotingTransportExc
eption
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : PSSessionOpenFailed
Failed to connect to an Exchange server in the current site.
The EMC throws throws a similar, but different error message, below:
The following error occurred while attempting to connect to the specified Exchange server 'ourexchangeserver.domain.tld':
The attempt to connect to http://ourexchangeserver.domain.tld/PowerShell using "Kerberos" authentication failed: Connecting to remote server failed with the following error message: The WinRM client cannot process the request. It cannot determine the content type of the HTTP response from the destination computer. The content type is absent or invalid. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.
We have two relevant error messages in the event log, that occur with a high frequency:
IIS-W3SVC-WP Event 2214, The HTTP Filter DLL E:\Program Files\Exchange Server\V14\ClientAccess\owa\auth\owaauth.dll failed to load. The data is the error.
and
IIS-W3SVC-WP Event 2268, Could not load all ISAPI filters for site 'DEFAULT WEB SITE'. Therefore site startup aborted.
Details for both show binary data of 0000007E ("In Words") / 7E 00 00 00 ("In Bytes"), which translates to ~....
Attempted thus far:
Resolutions from the Microsoft KB here. It seems that none of the conditions listed under the "cause" section are actually true.
The EMTshooter tool. Same as the support KB, it lies and says the cause is one of a missing WSMan entry that's present, a misconfigured Kerbauth module that's configured exactly as it should be or a modified PowerShell virtual directory path, which points at (and always has pointed at) the ..\Exchange Server\v14\ClientAccess\PowerShell directory.
Any thoughts or suggestions that don't involve setting myself on fire and jumping out a window would be appreciated.
Best Answer
When your VM came back up, is the system time correct? I would check that first; and then report back with the results. I've seen that cause these sort of errors. Also, is this the only Exchange 2010 server, and does it hold all EX10 roles (cas, hub, mbx?).
In that case, I would check to make sure IIS bindings are all setup correctly and port 80 is available on that server, or the other potential causes:
Also, what is the output of "winrm quickconfig"?
All potential problems are outlined @ Troubleshooting Exchange 2010 Management Tools startup issues