I have been battling a problem with my exchange/DC server 2003. The Exchange Server, that is also a backup DC, is unable to see the network but still functions as an Exchange Server. The email gets delivered, people are able to login from the road and retrieve their email, but when I try to view the network from the Exchange box I am unable to see any other computers, no computers can see it and am unable to add new user email addresses through AD. The event logs generate 2 errors all the time:Event Source: MSExchangeSAEvent Category: RFR InterfaceEvent ID: 9074Description: The Directory Service Referral interface failed to service a client request. RFRI is returning the error code:[0x3f0].Event Source: MSExchangeSAEvent Category: RFR InterfaceEvent ID: 9143Description: Referral Interface cannot contact any Global Catalog that supports the NSPI Service. Clients making RFR requests will fail to connect until a Global Catalog becomes available again. After a Domain Controller is promoted to a Global Catalog, it must be rebooted to support MAPI Clients.I can ping other computers and printers on the network, I can ping it from other computers, I can use remote desktop to log into other computers and I can remote desktop to it from other computers. I can replicate to and from it with the other DC and can see it from the DNS manager. All security and permissions are correct.Has anyone had this problem or heard of it? Any suggestions are appreciatedThanks

I've saw the same problem on2 of my exchange 2003 servers after applying the latest round of security updates for Exchange and Windows when I was applying the Dalight savings patches for both and then restarting. The 2 servers that had the problemare Exchange Enterprise SP2 on Windows 2003 enterprise SP1 and have HP system managment agents. I could not remote desktop to either and could only log into the local console after about 40 minutes.After logging in I noticed I could not access the NICs and the performance and logging service was stuck shutting down.I rebooted and repeated the theslow login process. I tried to remove the updates I applied from Add/remove programs but that process also hung. The servers still functionfor e-mail but a lot of the network services are not working. I used process explorer http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/processesandthreadsutilities.mspx to start killing exchange and HP management agent proceses as I could not stop the services and suddenly at some point the server said that a service failed and my NICs became visable in the system tray. I started add/remove programs again and this time I was able the remove the windows updates I applied. I rebooted the both servers and everything is back to normal. I have re-applied just the daylight saving patches and the servers are still functioning. The offending patches seem to have been released some time between Jan 4 and February 14. Rick

It maybe a relation between SymantecMail Securityfor Exchange 5.01 and the patches. The following patches were applied and once the servers rebooted we encountered the problem (can't access the Network properties, can't remote to the server but it still operates as an e-mail server. Exchange 2003 enterprise patches KB924334 Windows server 2003 Enterprise KB(931836, 924667, 928843, 928255, 928090, 926436 and 918118) The services that enters the "stopping" state after the server boots is called "Performance Logs and Alerts"

I narrowed down the problem as being an interaction between symantec mail security for exchange and the current Microsoft patches released January/February. If I set the symantec mail security service to manual the system will start normally and I can remote to it. I contacted symantec and they said this is a timing issue that can be addressed with a registry change that they are sending me. I hope this information will help others thatmay runinto it.

I am having the same issue. Server 2003 R2 w/ Exchange SP2 and recent updates installed. According the earlier post I decided to try to use the process explorer to kill the HP monitoing services (I also have an HP server with all their crappy services loaded). I also am running SMSMSE 5.0.5 build 366. I decided to kill that process as well and as stated above Windows reported an error about a service starting properly and then I could access things as normal. I'm not sure if it was stopping the HP services or the Symantec one that did the trick. So while the server was responding I disabled all the HP services and restarted the server. This time the server came up fine. The problem is I also spoke to Symantec and they mentioned the following article: http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-gate.nsf/docid/2004060213183054?Open&src=ent_gold_nam He mentioned that he had heard of this issue happening because the symantec services are trying to start up at the same time as the Exchange services. The above article walks you through a registry entry that forces the symantec services to wait until all the exchange services have started. The problem here for me is I'm still not a 100% sure if just disabling the HP services did the trick or if I still need to apply this symantec fix. Rick-Mac, can you let us know if adding the registry fix did the trick for you? And please verify if you are running an HP server with the HP services running? Thanks.

I running on HP servers. One server is running HP management agents 7.30 and the other is running HP management agents 7.70. What I did to finally prove to my self that the symantec mail security was conflicting with the new patches was to set its service to start manually. I rebooted the server several times, no problem. I then set the symantec mail security service back to automatic and rebooted and the problem returned. I was also pointed to the same article by symantec tech support andafter creating the DependOnservice key I was able to restart with symantec mail security set to automatic.

I had given up on getting an answer here. Glad someone told me to check back. Thanks for the help. I do not use Symantec as my anti-virus. I had already ruled out the Anti-Virus as the problem. Besides I am hesitant to discuss my anti-virus and firewall in a forum. No offense, but lets just say I have a "Friend" that use to do that when he was on the other side of network firewalls and anti-virus programs. I still have the problem and have applied every patch, service pack and hot fix known to man. Still no Joy. Thanks for the help and ideas everyone. I will post the solution I come up with if I ever do.

I have a very very similar problem: I recently visited a company after they reported email problems. The server has been working fine and no work has been carried out recently. I discovered the following in the event log on the server Event Type: ErrorEvent Source: MSExchangeSAEvent Category: RFR InterfaceEvent ID: 9074Description: The Directory Service Referral interface failed to service a client request. RFRI is returning the error code:[0x3f0]. Also when logging onto the server: Winlogon.exe has ecountered a problem...module: ntdll.dll When using remote desktop to access the server it allows me to enter my username/password then exits without error. Outlook 2003 client have no problems connecting to exchange, but Outlook 2000 clients crash when attempting send/recieve. The event 9074 seems to be caused by the outlook 2000 clients connecting to exchange. Any ideas?? HP Server SBS Server 2003 - no SP (planning a SP patch v.soon) Exchange Server 2003 Sophos SBS 2.0