Exchange System Attendant Does Not Start and You Receive a "Global Catalog Servers Not Responding" Error Message

After you install Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 successfully, the Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service may not start, and you may receive the following error message:

This issue occurs because no global catalog server can be found in a domain which has been "domain prepped" by the Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 Setup program. Additionally, a Recipient Update Service must exist for the domains containing the Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 server and the global catalog servers, even if no mail-enabled users will be created in these domains.

This error may occur in organizations where either:

• There are no global catalog servers in the domain where you installed Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003.
  
  -or-
  
  
• There is no Recipient Update Service created in the domain where you installed Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003.

Additionally, the global catalog server must belong to the local (or adjacent) Windows Active Directory site into which you installed Exchange 2000.

To resolve this issue, make sure that you have corrected both conditions listed in the "Cause" section of this article.

1. From Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003, run SETUP/DomainPrep in at least one domain that both contains a global catalog server and that belongs to the local (or an adjacent) Windows Active Directory site.
2. Create a Recipient Update Service in the domain where you installed the Exchange 2000 server.For additional information about how to create a Recipient Update Service, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
   275294  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/275294/EN-US/ ) XADM: Recipient Update Service Is Not Created Automatically

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.