MSMQ not sending or listening for Multicast messages

This article helps you resolve the problem where MSMQ is not sending or listening for Multicast messages.

Original product version:   Microsoft Message Queuing
Original KB number:   2000902

Symptoms

MSMQ not sending or listening for Multicast messages.

Cause

The problem is caused by the absence of Reliable Multicast Protocol for the Network Connection.

Resolution

The solution is to manually add the missing RMCAST protocol to the Network Connection.

1. Open Control Panel - Network Connections.
2. Right click "Local Area Connection" and select Properties.
3. Click Install...
4. Select Protocol then click Add...
5. If Reliable Multicast Protocol is not available in the list, you may have to browse the Windows installation media, for example, under \I386\INF folder.
6. Select NETPGM.INF and choose OK. (The edit box will just display <drive>:\I386\INF, but this is expected.)
7. Select Reliable Multicast Protocol then click OK.
8. Stop and Restart Message Queuing Service.

Multicasting messages should now start working.

More information

There were a couple of symptoms found in testing:

1. Cannot receive multicast messages in the application event log, MSMQ generated an event 2160:

   "The queue cannot listen/bind to the multicast address 234.1.1.1:8001 (Error:273c)." 0x273C translates to 10044 - WSAESOCKTNOSUPPORT - "The support for the specified socket type does not exist in this address family."

2. Unable to send multicast messages in Computer Management, the outgoing queue would stay in a 'waiting to connect' state.  What made the troubleshooting tricky was that the multicasting driver (RMCAST.SYS) seemed to be installed. At the command prompt, we could execute NET STOP RMCAST and NET START RMCAST without error. Also, the Message Queuing service had a dependency on RMCAST so if the Multicast driver was down, MSMQ would not have started anyway.