XADM: The Key Management Service Does Not Start After You Install Windows 2000 Service Pack 4

When you restart your server after you install Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (SP4), the Microsoft Exchange Server Key Management Service (KMS) service does not start.

Additionally, the following event is logged in the Application log of the Windows Event Viewer:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: MSExchangeKMS
Event Category: None
Event ID: 5085
Date: Date
Time: Time
User: N/A
Computer: ComputerName
Description:
KMS can not mount the key database. Either the database is missing or it is corrupted. The service started, but Admin/User can not do any operation except restoring the database from a backup set. After restoring, please stop and restart the service.

Data:
0000: 36 2e 30 2e 36 32 34 39 6.0.6249
0008: 2e 30 20 50 54 00 6b 6d .0 PT.km
0010: 73 65 72 76 65 72 2e 63 server.c
0018: 70 70 40 31 36 35 33 44 pp@1653D
0020: 44 31 00 6b 6d 73 65 72 D1.kmser
0028: 76 65 72 2e 63 70 70 40 ver.cpp@
0030: 31 31 32 30 44 48 61 38 1120DHa8
0038: 34 00 6b 6d 73 65 72 76 4.kmserv
0040: 65 72 2e 63 70 70 40 37 er.cpp@7
0048: 30 34 44 44 32 00 04DD2.

Note In this event message, "can not" is a misspelling for the word "cannot."

This problem occurs if you install Windows 2000 SP4 on a computer that is running Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) and that is also running Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Service Pack 3 (SP3).

To work around this problem, run the eseutil.exe /d command against the KMS database to defragment it. To do this, follow these steps:

Note By default, Eseutil.exe is stored in the Program Files\Exchsrvr\Bin folder. However, you can also locate this utility on the Exchange 2000 Server CD in the Support\I386 folder.

1. Perform a complete backup of your Exchange 2000 databases.
2. Start a command prompt, and then change to the Program Files\Exchsrvr\Bin folder on the hard disk where Exchange 2000 is installed.
3. Run the following command, where c:\program files\exchsrvr\kmsdata\kmsmdb.edb is the path of your KMS database:
   eseutil.exe /d "c:\program files\exchsrvr\kmsdata\kmsmdb.edb"
   Note While the /d switch is used with the eseutil command to defragment a database, the actual work that the Eseutil utility does is to create a new database to store the defragmented information in, and then to replace the existing database with this new copy. This is helpful when the existing database structure might be corrupted.
4. When the database is successfully defragmented, restart the Microsoft Exchange Key Management Service.

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

For additional information, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: