Thursday, August 30, 2012

Windows could not start the DNS server service on the local computer. Error 1717: The interface is unknown.

I ran into an issue the other week where my SBS 2008 box lost power.  There's a bunch of irrelevant backstory that I won't go into.  But the next day, more than a dozen services were not started - including all the Exchange services.  In the end, I tracked it down to the DNS Server service not being started.  When I attempted to start it manually, I got "Windows could not start the DNS server service on the local computer. Error 1717: The interface is unknown."

I found two solutions.  I applied them both simultaneously, so I don't know which one worked, but I'm documenting them here:

Solution 1:

I set my group policy back to defaults as per this page:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1533833
I did this (copying the solution in case that page ever goes away):
  • dcgpofix /ignoreschema
  • Press OK twice and run gpupdate /force
  • Reboot
Interestingly, my drive mappings group policy stayed in effect.  However, my password policy group policy settings were removed.


Solution 2:

I removed all of my event logs as per this page:

I'm writing this a couple weeks after the incident.  I don't remember not being able to open the event log, but I was in a panic as the issue was occurring during work hours, so I was throwing the kitchen sink at the problem.  To accomplish this task (copying the solution in case that page ever goes away), I did this:
  • Stopped the event log service
  • moved all files from %systemroot%\system32\winevt\logs to another location
  • Started the event log service

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, thanks for mentioning this. In our case we had 1 DC that was flaky, with these symptoms. I only cleared all the logs and then rebooted and it was fine.

Unknown said...

DNS Server service failure: The interface is unknown

http://winplat.net/post/2013/12/23/DNS-Server-service-failure-The-interface-is-unknown.aspx

Unknown said...

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results. See the link below for more info.


#start
www.ufgop.org