Once, I ensured that the issue is not due to an application pool or resyncing of passwords etc., I created a new IIS site and observed that even the default IIS site was exhibiting the same behavior. Later we realized that the issue is a known issue because of an update, as per the KB article: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/973917

Prior to applying the resolution ensured that the update (973917) is seen in the installed updates of the Add/remove program. Then, applied Windows 2003 SP2, in this scenario.

Details are given below:

Internet Information Services 6.0 may not function correctly after installing KB973917 https://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2009746

"Services on Server" page of the Central Admin Shows the status as -  Starting

No error is displayed in the User Interface or Application Event Viewer.

Project Application Service seems to fail even when initiated through the command prompt and showing up Starting status for quite long time.

If you did not yield any change even after an uninstall and reinstall, following steps will help address the issue.

Recently, when I encountered such a situation its observed that the service account has all the requisite permissions, however, only one entry of the following location did not have the read/write permission for the logged in user (service account - an account being used for the Central Admin Site) and ensuring read/write permission let the Project Applicaton Service run successfully.

“C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys”

[SPIisWebSiteWssSequence] [ERROR] [7/18/2009 11:13:56 PM]: Action 3.1.3.0 of Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.SPIisWebSiteWssSequence failed.

[SPIisWebSiteWssSequence] [ERROR] [7/18/2009 11:13:56 PM]: The system cannot find the path specified.

[SPIisWebSiteWssSequence] [ERROR] [7/18/2009 11:13:56 PM]:    at System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry.Bind(Boolean throwIfFail)

   at System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry.Bind()

   at System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry.get_AdsObject()

   at System.DirectoryServices.PropertyValueCollection.PopulateList()

   at System.DirectoryServices.PropertyValueCollection..ctor(DirectoryEntry entry, String propertyName)

   at System.DirectoryServices.PropertyCollection.get_Item(String propertyName)

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPIisApplicationPool.get_PeriodicRestartMemory()

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPProvisioningAssistant.EnableMemoryBasedAppPoolRecycling(SPIisApplicationPool local)

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPProvisioningAssistant.EnableMemoryBasedAppPoolRecycling(String applicationPoolId)

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.EnableMemoryBasedAppPoolRecycling.Upgrade()

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.SPActionSequence.Upgrade()

When we narrowed down the error we came to the conclusion that Upgrade failed due to deletion of some Application Pools. There is no UI in SharePoint to change Application Pool of a web application.

In my case, we reappointed the Application Pools, as per their previous state of the web applications to reach a quicker resolution. However, it is a good practice to delete the respective Web Application &  Application Pool and create a new one.

In case you like to go with the Object Model, please check the following blog for more details.

https://blogs.msdn.com/vijgang/archive/2009/07/21/change-the-application-pool-associated-with-a-web-application-in-sharepoint.aspx

Troubleshoot content deployment

Administer content deployment

For further reference, you may also check the following blog: 

https://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2009/05/03/technet-article-on-how-to-troubleshoot-content-deployment-has-been-released.aspx

Error: Server was unable to process request. --> Timebomb Expired

The environment includes one Project Server 2007, one SharePoint 2007 Appliction Server both residing on third party virtual machine with a physical backend SQL 2005 Server.

A quick thought reminds us that the issue should have been related/due to applying Sharepoint SP2, but that is not the case. The issue happend as the virtualization software stopped working on a specific date and time for whatever reason.

More Information about Office SharePoint Server Trial with Enterprise Client Access License:

Following is the Knowledge Base article on Office SharePoint Server Trial with Enterprise Client Access License - During the installation of the 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2, a product expiration date is activated incorrectly.

Title: When you install the 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2, the product expiration date is activated incorrectly : https://support.microsoft.com/kb/971620 

When clicked on "User Profiles and Properties" hyperlink of Shared Services Administration got the following error message:

An error has occurred while accessing the SQL Server database or the Office SharePoint Server Search service. If this is the first time you have seen this message, try again later. If this problem persists, contact your administrator.

The other When clicked on the "Search Settings" hyperlink of the Shared Services Administration, got another error: 

"Authentication failed because the remote party has closed the transport stream"

Having gone through multiple troubleshooting steps, an update of .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 on all the servers of the SharePoint farm helped addressing the above errors. The .NET Framework  seemed to be disturbed.

Detailed steps are given below:

1. Stop the Office SharePoint Services Search service. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. Click Start, click Run, type cmd , and then click OK.
   2. At the command prompt, type net stop osearch, and then press ENTER.
   3. Type exit to exit the command prompt.
2. Download and install the IIS 6.0 Resource Kit Tools. To obtain the IIS 6.0 Resource Kit Tools, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
   https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=56FC92EE-A71A-4C73-B628-ADE629C89499 (https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=56FC92EE-A71A-4C73-B628-ADE629C89499)
3. On each server in the farm that has Office SharePoint 2007 installed, follow these steps:
   1. Click Start, click Run, type cmd , and then click OK.
   2. Navigate to the location of the IIS 6.0 Resource Kit Tools (default location is: C:\Program Files\IIS Resources\SelfSSL)
   3. At the command prompt, type selfssl /s:1720207907 /v:1000, and then press ENTER.
      
      Notes
      • 1720207907 is the default ID of the Office Server Web Services.
      • However, check the ID of Office Server Web Services from IIS.
      • 1000 is the number of days that the certification will be valid.
4. Start the Office SharePoint Services Search service. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. At the command prompt, type net start osearch, and then press ENTER.
   2. Type exit to exit the command prompt.
5. Download and install the following update to the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

959209  (https://support.microsoft.com/kb/959209/ ) An update for the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 is available

Did anyone try to download Dec CU – 960011? I tried to download it and got the following error:

The KB article has no public hotfixes. Please contact support if you need immediate assistance.

https://support.microsoft.com/contactus/?ws=support

And below is the reason why:

Check:

Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package (Coreserver.msp): January 27, 2009
https://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;963022

Issues that this hotfix package fixes After you apply update 959637 or update 960011, the daily scheduled incremental crawl and full crawl never run. You intermittently find errors in the crawl logs for full or incremental crawls of SharePoint content. The errors resemble the following: 0x8002802B (TYPE_E_ELEMENTNOTFOUND.

I was going through following blog and came across this fact and wanted to share it with you all. If you need more information you may please check the following URL:

https://blogs.msdn.com/joerg_sinemus/archive/2009/03/26/moss-december-cu-960011-is-not-available-anymore.aspx

Error while completing the password synchronization of SharePoint 2003 or 2007 as per the KB article 934838

Expected: No Error message while running the stsadm commands.

Actual: One of the following errors may be seen as a result.

1) The password supplied with the username cor\s-mossdba was not correct. Verify that it was entered correctly and try again.

OR

2) The specified credentials are invalid. Parameter name: account.

CAUSE:
=======
Error is seen as the password is having special Character

RESOLUTION:
===========

Add double quotes when the password contains a special characters.

Example:

stsadm.exe -o osearch -farmserviceaccount DomainName\UserName -farmservicepassword <password&> should look like as given below.

stsadm.exe -o osearch -farmserviceaccount DomainName\UserName -farmservicepassword "password&"

Consider that you found your SharePoint content DB is showing with huge data size when checked it in the SQL 2000 / 2005/ 2008. However, if you use stsadm -o enumsites, the result may not be the same.

You may be wondering what is the reason for this abnormal size of the database.

Let us see how to find out the root cause ...

As a first step towards knowing the reasons, check if Audit is enabled

Enabling Auditing will consume lot of space on your SQL server. You may find the differential data occupied by the Audit Data.

Hence, verify if your AuditData table is showing this excess Data. If yes, auditing would be the root cause for the problem.

MORE INFORMATION:
=================

Following are the links which would be useful for you towards controlling the Audit logs.
a. Events audited when audit logging is enabled (Office SharePoint Server)
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc824909.aspx

b. Create a tool or an interface to delete the Audit log from Content DB of an auditing enabled SharePoint site
https://blogs.msdn.com/sowmyancs/archive/2008/05/29/create-a-tool-or-interface-to-delete-the-audit-log-from-content-db-of-an-auditing-enabled-sharepoint-site.aspx

c. Trimauditlog: Stsadm operation (Office SharePoint Server) à This command lets an administrator delete audit entries older than a certain date, as specified using the enddate parameter.

Ex: stsadm -o trimauditlog -enddate 20080704 -databasename WSSContent123456

Note: Please note that this operation is available after the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers is installed. 

d. For more details you may, please refer the following URL
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc706879.aspx

e. We can turn on auditing everywhere programmatically.  We can even prune the audit logs as we harvest data from them to keep content databases from filling up. For more details, please check the following blog.

https://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/12/04/how-we-did-it-nintex-reporting.aspx