Small Business Server services will not start, and remote desktop and UAC are broken

exchangeremote desktopuacwindows-sbs-2008windows-server-2008

Yesterday I began setting up a server with Windows Small Business Server 2008. All I am configuring it for right now is to be a domain controller and Exchange server.

I completed the initial setup of SBS then started looking through different connection options (allowing VPN versus using a TS Gateway). After I rebooted one time, I started having three not-obviously-related issues:

First, I could no longer remote desktop into the computer. I ran TCPView and saw that it was no longer listening on port 3389. I checked everything in Terminal Service Configuration but everything shows the computer ought to be allowing connections.

Also, when I tried to use anything that required user account control elevation, the UAC dialog never popped up and the program that was waiting just froze. If I try to run "regedit" from the Run box, for example, it never appears. When I run in safe mode which does not run with UAC, I was able to access everything. I didn't want to deal with it, so I turned off UAC and rebooted.

Finally, in the Windows SBS Console, there are status indicators for Security, Updates, Backup, and Other Alerts. The first three get stuck saying "Querying". Looking in the computer alerts, I have events showing the following services stopped:

  1. Background Intelligent Transfer Service
  2. KtmRm for Distributed Transaction Coordinator
  3. Distributed Transaction Coordinator
  4. Microsoft Exchange Information Store
  5. Microsoft Exchange System Attendant
  6. Microsoft Exchange Transport
  7. Windows Remote Management
  8. Update Services
  9. Windows Update

I figured I must have configured something wrong accidentally and I couldn't find anything using Google explaining what might be the case, so I just decided to format the hard drive and reinstall SBS from scratch. I did this and everything was working last night, but I just turned the machine back on and it is doing the same thing again!

On my second install, I did not configure anything except the following (all from SBS Console):

  1. Connect to the Internet (set IP and router address)
  2. Turn off customer feedback.
  3. Set up internet address.
  4. Decline to use a Smart Host for email.
  5. Added one standard user account.

Since this happened again and I was very careful the second time not to configure anything outside of the SBS Console, I feel like there's something else going on.

Right now the machine is on an isolated network that does have internet access. My desktop is the only other machine plugged into this network.

Any and all help is appreciated (before I tear my hair out!)

Best Answer

I'm fairly confident the problem was one of or a combination of:

  1. Setting a Secondary DNS server from my ISP rather than leaving the SBS server as its own sole DNS server.
  2. Disabling IPv6 because I believed I didn't need it.

I've since reinstalled and avoided disabling IPv6 or setting a secondary DNS server (instead adding our ISP's DNS servers as forwarders in Admininstrative Tools → DNS Server). I've yet to see any issues, although that's not to say they won't return.

However, if anybody can explain in an answer how exactly one or both of these would have caused my issues I will gladly give them the accepted answer.

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