Unable to Start Exchange Services with DSAccess Errors

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Heres another interesting Exchange case that I came across recently.

After several Service Packs, updates (both MS and Non-MS), were applied on the server, we came across this issue of not being able to start the several Exchange Services.

Events Logged were as follows:

Process MAD.EXE (PID=4036). Topology discovery failed, error 0x80040952 (LDAP_LOCAL_ERROR (Client-side internal error or bad LDAP message)). Look up the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) error code specified in the event description. To do this, use Microsoft Knowledge Base article 218185, "Microsoft LDAP Error Codes."

 Process w3wp.exe () (PID=3160). An remote procedure call (RPC) request to the Microsoft Exchange Active Directory Topology service failed with error 1753 (Error 0x6d9 (There are no more endpoints available from the endpoint mapper) from HrGetServersForRole). Make sure that the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service is running. In addition, make sure that the network ports that are used by RPC are not blocked by a firewall.

 Process MSEXCHANGEADTOPOLOGY (PID=9608). When updating security for a remote procedure call (RPC) access for the Microsoft Exchange Active Directory Topology service, Exchange could not retrieve the security descriptor for Exchange server object DIAMONDSBS - Error code=80040a01.

The Microsoft Exchange Active Directory Topology service will continue starting with limited permissions.

 After several hours of troubleshooting  when we tried to reinstall Exchange, it failed with :

Error:

The following error was generated when "$error.Clear();

 initialize-ServerPermissions -DomainController $RoleDomainController

 " was run: "Could not find a directory entry for the local host.".

 Incidently it turned out to be an issue with the host file; It had the following entry:

# ::1 localhost

127.0.0.1 localhost127.0.0.1 localhost

 

Once we removed 127.0.0.1 localhost127.0.0.1 localhost from the hostfile, we could complete the installation and start the Services. 

We later found out that a non-MS software might've caused these changes in the hostfile.

 

** Just to add : This was a rare case. Usually the above errors can be caused by errors in DNS / missing SPN registrations and or missing Audit permissions.