Microsoft Filtering Management Service and transport servive will not start on Exchange 2013

Question

After a reboot of an Exchange 2013 server the Microsoft Filter Management service will not start, which is preventing the transport service from starting. The only error when trying to start the service is Error 1503 - the service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion. A reboot did not resolve the issue.

Right before this happened I took a VMWare snapshot of the server and then installed KB5023038. However, even after reverting the snapshot the services still won't start. Does anyone know how to fix this? I saw a reference to being able to remove the dependency on this service from the transport service but do not see how to do that.

Thanks

Answer 1

Hello

One potential solution would be to try disabling the Microsoft Filter Management service altogether, and then attempt to start the transport service again. You can do this by running the following command in an elevated PowerShell session on the affected Exchange server:

Set-Service MSExchangeTransport -StartupType Disabled

Once you have disabled the transport service, try starting the transport service again. If it starts successfully, you can then re-enable the Microsoft Filter Management service by running the following command:

Set-Service MSFilter -StartupType Automatic

If this solution does not work, you can also try restoring the Exchange server from a backup taken prior to installing the KB5023038 update, and then applying the update again to see if the issue persists.

In a similar case i had to restore from backup but i hope you dont have to do that !

If my answer helped kindly mark it as Accepted , otherwise send us some feedback !

Regards