Many Services Do Not Start After You Upgrade to Windows Server 2003

After you upgrade your Microsoft Windows 2000-based computer to Microsoft Windows Server 2003, when you start the computer, many Windows services do not start. Additionally, you may receive a message that states that the page file is too small or that you do not have a page file.

This behavior occurs if you removed the following permissions for the Authenticated Users group on the drive where Windows is installed before you upgrade to Windows Server 2003:

• Read & Execute
• List Folder Contents
• Read

To resolve this issue, add the Authenticated Users group to the drive where Windows is installed, and then assign permissions. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Start Windows Explorer. To do so, right-click Start, and then click Explore.
2. Right-click the %SYSTEMROOT% drive (typically, this is drive C), and then click Properties.
3. Click the Security tab, and then click Authenticated Users. If Authenticated Users does not appear in the Group or user names list, add it. To do so:
   1. Click Add, type authenticated users in the Enter the object names to select box, and then click Check Names.
   2. Click OK.
4. In the Permissions for Authenticated Users list, click to select the following check boxes in the Allow column:
   • Read & Execute
   • List Folder Contents
   • Read
5. Click Apply, click Yes if you are prompted to continue changing the permissions on the root folder of the startup disk, and then click OK.
6. Manually start the services that are stopped, or restart the computer to have all the services start automatically.

When you upgrade your computer to Windows Server 2003, many services are changed to run under the Network Service account and the Local Service account. These new accounts are introduced in Windows Server 2003 and are both included in the Authenticated Users group. If you remove the Authenticated Users group permissions from the %SYSTEMROOT% drive by using a Group Policy setting or another method, when you upgrade to Windows Server 2003, these two accounts do not have permissions to access files on the startup drive. As a result, many services cannot start successfully, particularly Svchost.exe.