WINS Service restart may generate Event ID 4224 on Windows Server 2008

After installation of the WINS Feature on Windows Server 2008, an Event ID 4224 from WINS may be reported after a restart of the server or the service:

Log Name:       System
Source:         Wins
Date:           8/5/2009 12:00:00 PM
Event ID:       4224
Task Category:  None
Level:          Error
Keywords:       Classic
User:           N/A
Computer:       server.corp.contoso.com
Description:
WINS encountered a database error. This may or may not be a serious error. WINS will try to recover from it. You can check the database error events under 'Application Log' category of the Event Viewer for the Exchange Component,  ESENT, source to find out more details about database errors.  If you continue to see a large number of these errors consistently over time (a span of few hours), you may want to restore the WINS database from a backup. The error number is in the second DWORD of the data section.

During the process to start the WINS service, a request is made to initialize the WINS database, which has already been initialized. This cause can be confirmed by reviewing the second DWORD of the Binary data on the Details tab of the event, which is FFFFFBFA and means 'Database engine already initialized'.

If this event is logged after the service is restarted or the server is restarted and WINS operates normally, then this error event can be ignored.

This issue has been resolved in Windows Server 2008 R2.

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