Moss Farm Issue (Front End) Web Application Service Won't Start...

Question

So, I have three servers in my moss farm. A database server and two front-end servers...

On server 1 I am able to access my web application just fine and the services are running fine. However, on server 2 I am unable to start the Web Application service; I receive a error message on the screen stating "Check the server event logs for additional error information"...

When I check the event logs on server I see this error...

Error executing service instance (un)provisioning job. Service instance: "Windows SharePoint Services Web Application" (id "2d8886db-4b63-4841-bf48-4bd48d9a0c89) "1387""

Any thoughts..?

Answer 1

I would guess that either you have something up with IIS on Server 2 or that there's a deeper MOSS problem on Server 2. First thing is to figure out which web application is causing the problem.

Under Central Administration > Application Management > Web Application List. When you click on a web application name you'll see the ID for it in the query string. (i.e. /applications.aspx?WebApplicationId=ID-here)

Find the matching ID and you know that's the web application having issues. Check to make sure there's nothing wrong with that web application in IIS on Server 2.

If everything looks fine, I would remove server 2 from the farm and re-add to provision. If that doesn't work, remove server 2 from farm, reinstall MOSS, and then add back to farm.

Answer 2

I would check that the service account used for the web application has got the nessecary rights. Go to central administration then open "operations" > "service accounts" click web application Select the web application or check what users are used for the different web applications. Then check if they have the nessecary rights. I cant remember if it is nessecary for them to be local administrators on the server, but at least i would try making them local administrators. Then check if they have the nessecary rights on the SQL server. I think that db creator and writer is the only nessecary roles. But i generally up the rights until it works, then remove what i think is unnessecary rights afterwards.