Problem as described in KB944752 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944752/en-us) as customer does not allow under any circumstances that Exchange 2007 Servers are allowed to establish connection to the internet (except EDGE for SMTPSend). ServicesPipeTimeout set so startup of all services is no problem, but starting "exchange management console" or "exchange management shell" takes a nightmare ! I guess that signature verificationhas to time out too. Following KB936707 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936707/en-us) there is a hotfix available where the possibility to disable signature verification has been introduced. Coming to my question - any known drawbacks by installing that hotfix and disabling signature verification on Exchange 2007 servers ? Would that eliminate the long startup time for emc and shell ?

If you just don't have access to internet disabling signature verfication should be ok. You are not able to perform it today so it won't be any different. I am not certain if this hotfix will address yoru startup times on EMC and EMS. You can try http://blogs.technet.com/ucedsg/archive/2008/08/26/how-can-i-speed-up-the-exchange-management-shell-launch.aspxBhargav Shukla - MSFT - Exchange Reference: Exchange Server 2007 TechCenter - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124558.aspx; Exchange Server 2003 TechCenter - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123872(EXCHG.65).aspx; Microsoft Exchange Team Blog - http://msexchangeteam.com/default.aspx