Though rare, I have encountered this problem; where Services on my NT 4.0 (especially Exchange v5.5) and sometimes other Services don’t properly Stop.
Apparently they appear as being Stopped, when you click on Start – the system says “They are already Running” when you try to Stop them again from Command prompt or by using any 3rd party software like Hyena etc… – the systems says “The Service cannot be conrolled in its current state”. This finally leads to the complete Server shut-down and restart.
Recently, I have learntly about RoboER s/w from Heroix which can terminate freezing processes; but, this requires you to physically connect to the server through its Serial Port, isolate the process and kill it. Also, it is pretty expensive.
Does anyone have an idea with a Tool or Technique which can addres this freezing issue without requiring the Server reboot everytime it happens ?