XCON: MTA Service Terminates Unexpectedly

• Microsoft Exchange Server, version 4.0

SYMPTOMS

The Exchange MTA Service may terminate unexpectedly, causing message delivery to fail.

The Windows NT Application Event Log may show an entry similar to the following:

   Event ID:   9405
   Source:  MSExchangeMTA
   Category:   Field Engineering
   Type:    Error
   Description:
   An unexpected error has occurred which may cause the MTA to terminate.
   Error: Exception c0000005 occurred at Address 207a972. [BASE SUBMIT 17]
   (16).

   Microsoft (R) Windows NT (TM) Version 3.51 DrWtsn32
   Copyright (C) 1985-1995 Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved.

   Application exception occurred:
           App: emsmta.DBG (pid=44)
           When: 4/11/1996 @ 7:30:30.452
           Exception number: c0000005 (access violation)

CAUSE

A NULL pointer was passed to a function that did not check for it. When this pointer was de-referenced, and access violation occurred.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server version 4.0. This problem was corrected in the latest Microsoft Exchange Service Pack. For information on obtaining the Service Pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

   S E R V P A C K

MORE INFORMATION

The Thread where the access violation occurred may look similar to this:

State Dump for Thread Id 0x61 EAX=00000000 EBX=00000000 ECX=00000561 EDX=0542efe4 ESI=02505294 EDI=025052b6 EIP=0207a972 ESP=0542ef3c EBP=0542ef54 EFL=00000246 CS=001b DS=0023 ES=0023 SS=0023 FS=0038 GS=0000

function: EMSMTA!odpbcach

..... 0x0207a964  55               push         ebp
..... 0x0207a965  8bec             mov          ebp,esp
..... 0x0207a967  83ec0c           sub          esp,0c
..... 0x0207a96a  53               push         ebx
..... 0x0207a96b  8b4508           mov          eax,dword ptr [ebp+08]
..... 0x0207a96e  56               push         esi
..... 0x0207a96f  33db             xor          ebx,ebx
..... 0x0207a971  57               push         edi
FAULT-->. 0x0207a972  8b7008         mov          esi,dword ptr [eax+08]
..... 0x0207a975  885dff           mov          byte ptr [lreturn],bl
..... 0x0207a978  e833c4f9ff       call         sbpiwtid (02016db0)
..... 0x0207a97d  8b4d08           mov          ecx,dword ptr [xiarbptr]
..... 0x0207a980  668b4122         mov          ax,word ptr [ecx+22]
..... 0x0207a984  50               push         eax
..... 0x0207a985  e8f3bcf9ff       call         sbpiwacs (0201667d)
..... 0x0207a98a  668b451c         mov          ax,word ptr [xioper]

FramePtr  RetAddr   Param1   Param2   Param3   Function Name