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The service database is locked

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7 replies

by Member 21634564

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A user called me and said he had a print job stuck, and wanted me to kill it from the server. I went to Start and then the server locked up before it could display the contents of the Start menu. I went into Server Manager on an other machine and stopped the spooler service. When I tried to restart it from the other machine it locked up Server Manager and I had to kill it with Task Manager. Now Server Manager on the remote machine shows the Spooler Service is started, but the Stop button is greyed out and when I double click it, I get the error message: "The service database is locked."
How can I fix this? I can't just hit the button, I've got databases running.

7 replies

by dcadmin

You may need to reboot the machine when it is possible for you to. The machine will still run, but the services are in an unstable state.

by bhrdwh

Hi Jeff, The problem is due to your registry size, try out these solutions..

1. Right-click on "My Computer" & open properties, there click "Performance" & click "Virtual Memory" and look at the Registry size, your Current Reg Size & Maximun Size are almost equal. Increase the Max Reg Size & restart your server.
2. You could also uninstall softwares that are not being used at the moment. This would free up some Reg space.
3. Use a freeware utility called "PageFile Defragmenter" from www.sysinternals.com, this can defrag your Registry, Page file, SAM etc. I have set thsi on my servers to run each time they are rebooted.
Do let me know if the above helped.
Akash
akashdeep_b@yahoo.com

by Member 21634564

Thanks for the tip, but this won't let me unlock the service database and regain control at the console. I did a dirty shutdown last night and all is well now. I checked the reg size, current is 10MB, Max is set to 48MB.

by nettek

This error occurs when a service is set to start automatically, and is unable to do so. If the error happens again, to identify the offending service you can run winmsd.exe, check the services report, and look for a service with a status of "start pending". Microsoft's excellent solution to this is to set the service to start manually, but then you have to remember to go in and start the service yourself after reboot. Some of the causes of this error were addressed in SP6a. I would install it if you haven't done so, or reinstall it if you have.

by shanghai sam

I suspect the lock happened when I tried to stop and restart the spooler service using Server Manager on a different machine. This is a production machine that usually runs flawlessly as configured. The desktop was completely locked up before I usedServer Manager so I wouldn't have been able to use winmsd.exe. I was just looking for a way to unlock the Service Database without having to hit the power switch to reboot.

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