CREATE BLOG dbo.SqlServer

I haven't blogged in quite a while - I have been so busy prepping for the launch of VideoBooks.com (launching September 8) that I've just let programming and video production eat my time away hehe. So, this past week when my SQL Server on my laptop started giving me fits, I initially let it slide. Now, it just won't start whenever I boot the computer - so I figured it was time to research the issue (and blog about it!).

Here's the scenario - my HP dv9000 laptop (the replacement - not the original one that HP Support kept for 64 days - more here) is throwing disk errors. You know the kind - "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0 during a paging operation." These tend to generally be warnings of impending doom... time to call HP Support again - oh I just threw up a little bit...

Okay - so back to my boot sequence. Once I noticed the disk errors, I also saw that some of my services began to fail on startup - such as my SQL Server. Here's a dump of my System error log:

• The SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service terminated with service-specific error 10050 (0x2742).
• The SQL Server Agent (MSSQLSERVER) service depends on the SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service which failed to start because of the following error:
  The service has returned a service-specific error code. (my favorite)

Earlier on (in the boot sequence) the TCP IP driver had failed ("The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load: Tcpip") and that, seemingly, caused this entire chain of events - everything thing from my antivirus, to SQL Server, to my virtual PC software failed.

The next stop was to review the Application Event Log where I found these gems:

• Server failed to listen on 'any' <ipv4> 1433. Error: 0x2742. To proceed, notify your system administrator.
• TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0x2742, status code 0xa.
• TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0x2742, status code 0x1.
• Could not start the network library because of an internal error in the network library. To determine the cause, review the errors immediately preceding this one in the error log.
• SQL Server could not spawn FRunCM thread. Check the SQL Server error log and the Windows event logs for information about possible related problems.

Here's the thing - the SQL Server will not start on boot but it starts after boot just fine when I go to the SQL Server Configuration Manager and tell it to start the service.

Now the important error message here, to me, is the "SQL Server could not spawn FRunCM thread" error. Just so you have some background, an "FRunCM thread" is essentially SQL Server trying to generate a self-signed certificate - the kind it uses in connections between clients and services. What is curious is that, in the SQL Server Error Log, it says, "The certificate was successfully loaded for encryption." but is immediately followed by additional errors...

So - the typical fix/cause for this (acccording to posts on blogs/forums) is to disable the VIA protocol. But I don't have VIA protocol enabled...

Oh well - nothing for me to do but to get a new hard drive and see if it keeps doing the same thing...

# posted by Scott Whigham @ 8:00 AM