Could not start the Microsoft Exchange Management Service on Local Computer Error:

After rebooting a Windows 2000 Advanced Server (running Exchange 2000 SP3) the Microsoft Exchange Management Service Failed to Start. Manually starting the service generated the following error:

“Could not start the Microsoft Exchange Management Service on Local Computer. The service did not return an error. This could be an internal Windows error or an internal service error. If the problem persists, contact your system administrator.

The event log also contained an error:

Event ID: 6
Source: MSExchangeMGMT
Type: Error
Description: The Microsoft Exchange Management service encountered an error (0xThe specified module could not be found.)

A colleague of mine browsed eventID.net. A suggested solution was to check the path to the “atl.dll file in registry”. Registry Key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{44EC053A-400F-11D0-9DCD-00A0C90391D3}\
InprocServer32 @=”C:\\WINNT\\System32\\ATL.DLL

There were two keys present after searching the registry, one was pointing to the correct location (”c:\winnt\system32\atl.dll”) the other was pointing to c:\program files\ibm\dsa\atl.dll. The article suggests that only the c:\winnt\system32 path will work and the service will fail to start if it is pointing to a different location.

I’m no clearer as to the role that the atl.dll file plays with the exchange management service, but changing the second key so that it was re-pointed to c:\winnt\system32 did the trick. The service started successfully after a manual start. Earlier that week IBMs Dynamic System Analysis Tools (DSA tools) had been installed on the server. For whatever reason the tool seems to have changed one of the ATL.dll registry keys, causing the management service to fail.