[Short url for this article – http://doiop.com/ocsFE_issue]
I am sure you must be facing this issue suddenly in your OCS production environment. This is quite interesting. I’m just sharing my experience. It’s also quite funny that Microsoft releases ‘Security updates’ and ends up bringing down a production server. One of the Windows security update KB974571 has broken OCS R2; that’s why OCS Front-End service Stopped.
My OCS Server, LiveMeeting; Group Chat environment was working fine until Yesterday. But Today when i have tried to login to OCS, I was not able to login. Then i checked for my OCS Server; found that all of the OCS Services are in started state except OCS Front-End service.
I tried to restart my OCS FE, but i ended with the following service specific error 3286842403 (0xC3E93C23).
Log Name: System
Source: Service Control Manager
Date: 10/15/2009 11:22:54 AM
Event ID: 7024
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: FTI-360-VM1.ima64.com
Description:
The Office Communications Server Front-End service terminated with service-specific error 3286842403 (0xC3E93C23).
Event Xml:
7024
0
2
0
0
0x80000000000000
54887
System
FTI-360-VM1.ima64.com
Office Communications Server Front-End
3286842403 (0xC3E93C23)
I was just clueless for a moment. I was not ready to accept that something has gone wrong with my OCS Server as nobody has access rights; also it was working fine till late night yesterday. I did not know how to proceed from there for a moment.
I took a dip breath; then restarted my system. But still the same issue was there.
Then i started thinking what might went wrong in last 8 hours. Suddenly i thought let me check for updates happened in my system last night.
Then after half an hour I figure it out, that One of the Windows security update KB974571 has broken OCS R2; that’s why OCS Front-End service Stopped.
I removed this Windows update & restarted my OCS Front End Service.
Then it worked fine for me.
It’s a bug in windows update….. They have managed bring down a critical product service with the release of a windows update.
This could happen for LCS & OCS R1 deployments also.
Please also note of another complexity that affects end users –
Auto-upgrades are enabled on end user desktops as well. Security Update KB974571 will be applied on end user desktops. Hence users will not be able to login to OCS though the FE Server is up, after removing the offending update from the FE Server.
But the users without this Security update will be able to login to OCS. To address this issue, end users too need to uninstall this update from their desktops. This is applicable for LCS as well.
Thanks! You have saved my day!!!!!!! Great work!
Well spotted, we had the exact same issue today
great catch. thank you so much.
Yes, thanks, exactly the same issue here. Kudos.
Absolutely excellent… you saved me several days of fruitless troubleshooting! Thanks…
Thanks for sharing! I had the same issue this morning.
Well done! This fixed my problem too!
Thanks man! Saved me bunch of time!
Good looking out!!! I just got out of a traffic jam this morning and was getting rushed about office chat as soon as I got in the door. You sure save me my friend!!!
Excellent catch, saved me some diggin, much appreciated. Thanks!
Thanks. Fortunately it happened to my lab installation. Btw, MS does recommend to disable automatic updates on OCS servers?
Nice work and thanks for posting the issue/results. You saved me a lot of time.
Thanks, we had this exact issue!
Thanks! Update only affected our ocs server, workstations with the update are able to login with the update applied
Thanks for the info. It would have taken me a day or so to find this. It’s absolutely ridiculous that M$ doesn’t test KB updates on every one of THEIR OWN SERVER PRODUCTS.
Hello, I am experiencing this same issue. However, I cannot find the update listed in the Add/Remove programs under the control panel. How do I remove this KB?
Hi again, after a small amount of searching I found the way to remove the KB and my LCS service is now restored.
Thanks again for posting this solution so quick. You saved me so much time troubleshooting.
Like Josh above I can’t fathom how Microsoft would not test an update before releasing it. This is a BIG issue, bringing down your customers LCS and OCS product.
It works… but I don’t blame MS… they have 100000000001 things to test and this probably slipped through the cracks.
Saved me too! Wish every troubleshooting issue was this easy! Good catch!!
Thanks for this information. Good indepth knowledge.
Yet another sysadmin chipping in their two bits to affirm this problem. Thank you for you great work on this.
Well uninstalling the update worked for me only on Edge server. FE still fails after update removed. I even removed all updated installed on that day, but still no luck. Right now I get exit code E0434F4D.
Thank you thank you thank you! This saved me from having to go in on my day off and spend countlesss time working on it. Our new company head uses OCS all the time – so if it wasn’t working on monday morning it would ahve been really bad news.
You are MY MAN! You saved my night. Thanks a million and I owe you one.
Thanks for posting, saved me a lot of troubleshooting.
Seems this affects OCS 2007 as well as OCS 2007 R2. Removing the patch and rebooting has fixed it for me.
Thanks…Had the same issue with the older 2005 Office Live Communications Server too. Service would not start; gave weird errors about having a non-evaluation version installed. Uninstalling the “patch” fixed it. Your insight is much appreciated!
We have R2 clients but regular OCS 2007 (not R2) on the server. Once we uninstalled from the server & rebooted, everything was fine. The clients still have the update though.
Excellent catch on that update. I was starting to cry because we have 200 people on OLC and the all where screaming at the same time!!!
Million thanks for the support!
Fixed work for us too. However, some good news, we did NOT need to remove the patch from the client machines, only from the Communicator servers.
Another thank you from a fellow IT guy!
Thank you so much for this!! You realy saved my day!!! Now I have to stop this to be installed on my other front end server. :o)
Microsoft are coming here for a meeting today regarding OCS, guess what I’m going to talk about… ;o)
Another thank’s from a fellow IT girl 😀
Thank you very much!! Your post save me too much time and my users were offline for few minutes.
Thanks dude. I had just replaced my 2005 with 2007 and had just gotten it stable when I installed the update. MS site had NOTHING on this. You are da’ man.
Thanks!
Our installation was 2005 SP1 and suddenly started telling us that the evaluation mode was up. We never used an evaulation copy of the software on this server
Uninstalling the update fixed our issue…
Just like everyone else here, we had the exact problem, except we had another serious problem on our hands… Our OCS server is low on disk space so one of my co-workers deleted the uninstall package that is used with KB974571 (a long with other updates that we installed). Luckily, I found the KB article that explains which file(s) are changed with the update depending on the OS.
We are running Windows 2003 x86 so the only file that changed was msasn1.dll. I searched the server for another copy of the file and was able to find one. I renamed the most recent version of msasn1.dll to msasn1.old and copied the old file in the Windows\System32 folder. The OCS Frontend service started up like a champ and we are chatting away once again.
I don’t know how often Microsoft has updated msasn1.dll so I’m not sure what problems we may have from doing this. You may want to use this as a last resort.
Thanks for posting this blog. It saved us a ton of time.
A BIG thank you, you saved my morning. Updated our server with 26 updates then OCS stopped working. Thanks to you i quickly found which update (KB974571) created the problem and needed to be removed.
Thanks nice one.
Thanks!!! You saved my saturday!!!
You Rock
deisntalae la actulizacion y el servicio de front-end sigue sin levantar
alguna idea???
Saludos
Raul
Thanks man u have same my time thank you very much
I has same problem but after 2 hours of googling, I found the solution.
http://blogs.technet.com/jribeiro/archive/2009/10/19/issues-in-ocs-2007-lcs-2005-caused-by-applying-kb974571.aspx
Thanks a lot dude, i had a test set up and luckily i got ur page in 5-10 min of googlin……….
Saved my day
Keep up the good work buddy
Raj
Thanks for the post! This saved the day this morning.
Chris
Many thanks. Good information on the client side. i applied the *new* update and the installation went through fine.
Good job. Thanks.
Mark-Allen
you are a super star!!!! you saved me hours of research man. way to go!!!!
You can also run ocsasnfix to resolve this
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974571/