Hello,

Any ideas why my SSAS 2008 instance suddenly started reporting this on startup?:

The service cannot be started: Message-handling subsystem: The message manager for the default locale cannot be found. The locale will be changed to US English. Message-handling subsystem: The message manager for the default locale cannot be found. The locale will be changed to US English.

Looking through the log, it appeared to have no difficulty on September 1 2011, however the following day it started reporting this error and I'm not aware of having changed anything.  Note: I am in New Zealand so am running on NZ regional settings - I understand this may have a bearing on the problem, but I am confused as to why it occured with no deliberate changes made by me??

Michael

Please check the below similar thread

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqldatabaseengine/thread/de9f27b6-36ba-4180-9970-138e2c234a05/

Hope the solution in it helps.

Thanks Sorna,

I already found that thread and switched to a different account with US English Regional settings, which immediately yielded this error on startup:

(9/5/2011 3:20:31 PM) Message: The service cannot be started: XML parsing failed at line 1, column 0: A document must contain exactly one root element.
. (Source: \\?\C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSAS10.MSSQLSERVER\OLAP\Log\msmdsrv.log, Type: 3, Category: 289, Event ID: 0xC1210000)

And I traced this error message with someone else has addressed here:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlanalysisservices/thread/9b9202cb-c709-4d20-b316-72ffcea5b4a6/

The above implies some sort of corruption has occurred to SSAS.

I briefly looked at de-installing and re-installing my SSAS 2008 instance but couldn't see how I could selectively remove SSAS without removing everthing else (I use the DB engine, SSI, SSRS among other things) and I'm reluctant to go down the full blown de-install/re-install SQL Server route after reading so many horror stories of people struggling with picking through registry entries and then eventually wiping and re-installing Windows afresh to recover.  If I go to Control Panel - Programs and Features - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (64 bit) - Uninstall/Change I am presented with three options: Add, Repair or Remove.  I thought I'd be able to get into some sort of installation wizard where I could selectively add/remove components but from what I've read, selecting "Remove" will simply remove SQL Server in its entirety, which is not what I want!

The thing that puzzles me is how this issue occurred overnight on a machine that I've been running all this software on for upwards of 12 months with no such difficulty.  I was hoping it was merely a side-effect of a Windows Automatic Update and therefore easy to identify/rollback before I get into the who re-installing thing.

Michael

Success!

After inspecting the Event Log more closely I saw that on the morning of September 2, CHKDSK ran and found some corruption on the disk.  This obviously accounts for the sudden failure.

Following tips from other users, I simply moved everything out of the C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\<my instance>\OLAP\Data folder, then restarted the SSAS instance and it sprang back into life!  My cubes are all gone, but there's only one I care about and I regenerated this from BIDS and re-processed in about 5 minutes.

Phew.  I guess this is my fault for getting frustrated with my laptop and closing the lid whilst it's in the process of shutting down.

Michael

• Marked as answer by michael12345 Tuesday, September 06, 2011 2:23 AM

Thanks for this info. Very helpful. My computer had also done a chkdsk when this error began to appear. I looked in  C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\<my instance>\OLAP\Data folder and found the file that was open at the time when the chkdsk occurred and removed it. Work a treat.