Knowledge Base

XCON: MTA Fails to Start with 9405 Error Message

Article ID: 154337

Article Last Modified on 10/28/2006

APPLIES TO

This article was previously published under Q154337

SYMPTOMS

The Microsoft Exchange message transfer agent (MTA) fails to start. The following error message appears in the event log.
Error 9405 Source: MSExchangeMTA
Field Engineering
Description:
An unexpected error has occurred which may cause the MTA to terminate
Error: Base-MS Not initialised-Error=3909, Parm1=0,Parm2=0 [BASE MAIN BASE 1] (16).

Event id: 9405
Description: An unexpected error has occurred which may cause the MTA to terminate
Error: Fatal severity error - 3909 {BASE MAIN BASE 1] (16).
When you attempt to run MTAcheck.exe from the Exchsrvr\bin subdirectory, the same error is reported.
Base-MS Not initialised-Error=3909,Parm1=0,Parm2=0
Fatal severity error - 3909.

MORE INFORMATION

When the Microsoft Exchange MTA initializes it checks all the files in the \Exchsrvr\Mtadata subdirectory. The error message is reported when the files required to initialize the MTA are missing or corrupted. 3909 means "NO BASE RECORD IN SCT". These files can be sct.inp or .tpl files or other files in the Mtadata subdirectory (except the .dat files).

RESOLUTION

Replace the corrupted files from the Microsoft Exchange compact disc. It is safe to copy all the files to the MTADATA subdirectory except the .dat files. The files can be copied from the Exchange compact disc from the \Setup\I386\Mtadata subdirectory, OR from the Exchsrvr\Mtadata subdirectory of another server with a functional MTA. If you replace these files from a compact disc, remove the read-only attributes from the files. In any event, whether copying these files from a compact disc or from another Exchange server, the versions (service packs and/or MTA hotfixes) must match.

Additional query words: SP2 mta crash down server

Keywords: kbusage KB154337


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