IMAP4 and POP3 Services Cause Exchange Server 2000 to Lose Connectivity and Its Services to Hang

Source: Microsoft Support

RAPID PUBLISHING

RAPID PUBLISHING ARTICLES PROVIDE INFORMATION IN RESPONSE TO EMERGING OR UNIQUE TOPICS, AND MAY BE UPDATED AS NEW INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE.

The Exchange Server exhibited apparently unrelated symptoms including the following:

-Every few days, the server would lose connectivity either to the Internet, to the local Lan segment or both. A successful reboot of the server resolved the issue for another 2 to 4 days until the symptoms appeared again.

-For approximately 80% of server reboots, the Exchange services would hang. The Service applet showed them as "Starting". Rebooting repeatedly until a successful boot was accomplished was the only way to clear this.

-From the console, the mouse moved slowly in some windows, but not in others.

The following events appeared in the application event log:

Event ID     : 1008
Raw Event ID : 1008
Record Nr.   : 354957
Category     : None
Source       : Perflib
Type         : Error
Generated    : 6/22/2005 1:55:03 PM
Written      : 6/22/2005 1:55:03 PM
Machine      : <MACHINE NAME>
Message      : The Open Procedure for service "AppleTalk" in DLL 
"C:\WINNT\system32\atkctrs.dll" failed. 
Performance data for this service will not be available. Status code 
returned is data DWORD 0.

Data:
3B 00 00 00 


Event ID     : 3001
Raw Event ID : 3001
Record Nr.   : 354956
Category     : Unknown
Source       : atkctrs
Type         : Error
Generated    : 6/22/2005 1:55:03 PM
Written      : 6/22/2005 1:55:03 PM
Machine      : <MACHINE NAME>
Message      : EventViewer pro error 0x2: Could not open the dll which is required 
to format this event.
There is no entry in the mapping table and the registry

There is no insertion string.
Data:
C8 77 09 00 00 00 00 00 


Event ID     : 2002
Raw Event ID : 2002
Record Nr.   : 354955
Category     : None
Source       : Perflib
Type         : Error
Generated    : 6/22/2005 1:55:03 PM
Written      : 6/22/2005 1:55:03 PM
Machine      : <MACHINE NAME>
Message      : The open procedure for service "AppleTalk" in DLL 
"C:\WINNT\system32\atkctrs.dll" has taken longer than
the established wait time to complete. There may be a problem with this extensible 
counter or the service it is collecting data from or the system may have been very 
busy when this call was attempted

Note The atkctrs.dll is the performance monitor counter used to monitor the Appletalk protocol. Refer to the following Microsoft technical article for more information:

130000 Application Events 2000 & 3001 Appear While Monitoring SFM

When the following services were stopped and disabled, and the server rebooted, all of the above symptoms would disappear:

IMAP4SVC - Microsoft Exchange IMAP4
POP3SVC - Microsoft Exchange POP3

Unknown. Speculation is that the Appletalk protocol was corrupted.

Removing File and Print Services for Mac and the Appletalk protocol alleviated all of the above symptoms.

Remove the Appletalk protocol via the Networks icon in the Control Panel.

Refer to the following Microsoft technical article for instructions to remove File and Print Services for Mac:
301180 How To Add Components and Programs to Your Computer in Windows 2000