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

ID: Q168883

The information in this article applies to:

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 appears in the event viewer's application 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 are attempting 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 will find that the Stop button is unavailable.


CAUSE

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

The same error and symptom may result from a corrupted message in the MTA store. For more information, see below under More Information.


RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem:

  1. Stop the Internet Mail Service using Kill.exe or Tlist from the Windows NT Resource Kit or BackOffice Resource Kit. The IMC service should show up as stopped in the Control Panel Services.


  2. Create two sub-directories called temp under Imcdata\In and Imcdata\Out


  3. Move all the files from Imcdata\in to Imcdata\in\temp and from Imcdata\out to Imcdata\out\temp.


  4. Delete the file Imcdata\queue.dat.


  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 below.


  7. Move 50 percent of the messages from Imcdata\in\temp to Imcdata\in and\or from Imcdata\out\temp to Imcdata\out. Delete Queue.dat, and then stop the Internet Mail Service and restart it. If this process is successful, repeat it until you find the bad message(s) and move all the good messages out.


NOTE: Another method to find the bad message is to try moving all the files from Imcdata\in to Imcdata\in\temp and from out to out\temp, while the IMC is still in the locked state. You may receive a message that certain file can not be moved because it is in use. This file is most probably the corrupt file that the IMC crashed while trying to process it.


MORE INFORMATION

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

For additional information on troubleshooting a corrupted message in the MTA store, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q165505 XADM: How to View/Delete Messages in MTS-IN and MTS-OUT Queues

Q157323 XCON: Identifying and/or Reconstructing a Connector Queue

Additional query words: dr. watson 


Keywords          : kbtshoot kbusage XFOR 
Version           : WinNT:4.0,5.0
Platform          : winnt 
Issue type        : kbprb

Last Reviewed: April 15, 1999