Question
Some of the services on my GMS server do not stop cleanly when I try and stop them from the Mail > System > Control Services page. Once the service gets in this state it has to be killed or the system rebooted to recover.
Answer
This is due to a Windows 2000 routine to close down the TCP/IP stack. From time to time Windows 2000 can exception within this routine while performing a call to WSACleanup.
Gordano have provided a workaround for this problem with the operating system. To implement the workaround you need to open regedt32.exe and open the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareInternetShopperMailParameters. Add a value of type DWORD with name "MSBugFix" and value of 1.
All of the GMS services need to be restarted before this setting will have any effect. To restart the services open a command prompt and change to the gordanobin directory then type "mail -stop" and press the Enter key. Once this completes type "mail -start" and press the Enter key.
Note: MSBugFix is a bitmap and bit 0 is a flag called WIN2K_WSACLEANUP_FIX
It has also been found that updating to Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 resolved the issue without the need to set the above variable.
Keywords:Services stopping