XCON:Event 2152 May Occur During Message Transfer Agent Startup

ID: Q169918

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Exchange Server, version 5.5

SYMPTOMS

When starting the Microsoft Exchange Server Message Transfer Agent (MTA), the following error message may be displayed:

Could not start the Microsoft Exchange Message Transfer
Agent service on \\servername. Error 2140: An internal
Windows NT error occurred.

Also, the following event may be logged in the Application Event Log:


   Event ID: 2152
   Source: MSExchangeMTA
   Category: Field Engineering
   A fatal database error occurred, the database recovery
   operation was not successful and manual correction will
   be required. Details can be found in the file:
   D:\EXCHSRVR\mtadata\.\MTACHECK.OUT\MTACHECK.LOG. Please
   contact Microsoft Product Support Services.
   [DB Server MAIN BASE 1 0] (16)

CAUSE

The MTA is attempting to perform an online MTACHECK during startup, and an existing Mtacheck.log file located in the \Exchsrvr\Mtadata\Mtacheck.out directory may be corrupt. Additionally, the MTA may fail to start if the Mtacheck.log file is marked as read-only. This flag should never be set by the MTA itself.

RESOLUTION

Either move or delete the Mtacheck.log file from the specified directory or remove the read-only attribute of the file.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem with Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

Keywords : XCON kbbug5.50
Version : WinNT:5.5
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbbug