XFOR: 4037 Event Starting Internet Mail Service, 1067 Error Starting IMC (168883)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0
  • Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0
  • Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5
This article was previously published under Q168883

SYMPTOMS

The Internet Mail Service (or Internet Mail Connector, in version 4.0) stops responding and cannot be restarted. If you attempt to start it manually or run the Internet Mail Wizard, an event similar to the following is logged in the Windows NT Event Viewer application event log:
Event ID: 4037
Type: Error
Source: MSExchangeIMC
Category: Internal Processing
Description: An exception has occurred which was handled internally by the Internet Mail Service. This may have resulted in a message not being delivered.
If you attempt to start the Internet Mail Connector, the following error message is also displayed:
Could not start the Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Connector service on \\<servername>.

Error 1067: The process terminated unexpectedly.
If you attempt to stop the Internet Mail Service, you find that the Stop button is unavailable.

CAUSE

This problem may result from a corrupt message in the Exchange Server directory (the Imcdata\In or IMCdata\Out directories). Resolving this condition is the subject of this article.

The same error and symptom may result from a corrupted message in the message transfer agent (MTA) store. For more information, see the "More Information" section of this article.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem:
  1. Stop the Internet Mail Service using the Kill.exe file or the Tlist utility from the Windows NT Resource Kit or BackOffice Resource Kit. The IMC service should be displayed as stopped in Control Panel when you double-click Services.
  2. Create two sub-directories called Temp under the Imcdata\In and Imcdata\Out directories.
  3. Move all the files from the Imcdata\In directory to the Imcdata\In\Temp directory and from the Imcdata\Out directory to the Imcdata\Out\Temp directory.
  4. Delete the Imcdata\queue.dat file.
  5. Restart the Internet Mail Service. If it starts and stays on, test the normal operation, and then move to step 7.
  6. If the IMC stops again, the corrupt message is not in the directory, but rather in the MTA store, and you have to follow the steps in the articles referenced in the "More Information" section of this article.
  7. Move 50 percent of the messages from the Imcdata\In\Temp directory to the Imcdata\In directory and from the Imcdata\Out\Temp directory to the Imcdata\Out directory. Delete the Queue.dat file, and then stop the Internet Mail Service and restart it. If this process is successful, repeat it until you find the bad messages and move all the good messages out.
NOTE: Another method to find the bad message is to move all the files from the Imcdata\In directory to the Imcdata\In\Temp directory and from the Out directory to the Out\Temp directory, when the IMC is still in the locked state. You may receive a message that a certain file cannot be moved because it is in use. This file is most probably the corrupt file, and the IMC crashed while trying to process it.

MORE INFORMATION

The same error message and symptom may result from a corrupted message in the MTA store.

For additional information about troubleshooting a corrupted message in theMTA store, click the article numbers below to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

165505 XADM: How to View/Delete Messages in MTS-IN and MTS-OUT Queues

157323 XCON: Identifying and/or Reconstructing a Connector Queue

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:4/21/2005
Keywords:kbprb kbtshoot kbusage KB168883
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