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The SQL Server service and the SQL Server Agent Service fail to start on a standalone server

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This article helps you resolve the problems where the SQL Server service and the SQL Server Agent Service may not start on a standalone server.

Original product version:   SQL Server
Original KB number:   307288

Symptoms

  • Issue 1: On a standalone server, the MSSQLSERVER service may fail to start, and you receive the following error message:

    An error 1068 - (The dependency service or group failed to start.) occurred while performing this service operation on the MSSQLServer Service.

  • Issue 2: Similarly, the SQLServerAgent service may also fail to start, and you receive the following error message:

    An error 1068 - (The dependency service or group failed to start.) occurred while performing this service operation on the SQLServerAgent Service.

    Issue 1 and Issue 2 occur when both of the following conditions are true:

    • The server computer is in a workgroup and not part of a domain.
    • Both the MSSQLSERVER and SQLServerAgent services are set to use a domain account for the startup.

  • Issue 3: On a domain member server, the MSSQLSERVER service may not start during the server start, and you receive the following message in Event Viewer with event id 7038:

    The MSSQLSERVER service was unable to log on as domain\mssqlsvc with the currently configured password due to the following error: Source: NetLogon Description: There are currently no logon servers available to service the logon request. The MSSQLSERVER service terminated unexpectedly.

This problem occurs when all the following conditions are true:

  • The server is part of a domain.
  • Both the MSSQLSERVER and SQLServerAgent services are set to use a domain account for the startup.
  • The startup mode for the MSSQLSERVER and SQLServerAgent are set to Automatic.

Cause

The Issue 1 and Issue 2 occurs because the server is a standalone computer, the NetLogon service does not start on the server, hence no domain-wide logon authentications are possible.

The Issue 3 occurs because SQL Server services try to start before NetLogon service starts.

Resolution

To fix the Issue 1 and Issue 2, follow these steps:

  • Change the startup account of both the MSSQLSERVER and SQLServerAgent to use the local system account.

  • Restart the server.

To fix the Issue 3, use the following workarounds:

  • Configure the SQL Server startup to delayed start for particular Windows servers, other Windows services such as NetLogon complete first and SQL Server starts without problems.

  • Configure the SQL Server startup to retry, the startup can be completed on the second startup attempt.

  • Change the Duplicate Address Detection (-DadTransmits) value to 1 for all network interfaces on the server. See command Set-NetIPInterface for more information.

  • Change the Recovery options for SQL Server and SQL Server Agent services. Specify Restart the service as action for the failure options. You can perform this option from the Services applet of Administrative Tools using the familiar Service Control Manager interfaces.

If the delayed start option can't fix this Issue 3, you can add the following dependencies to the SQL Server service:

  • Ip helper service
  • Server Service
  • Network list service

You can add the dependencies by using the following command:

sc.exe qc MSSQLSERVER ::view dependencies sc.exe config MSSQLSERVER depend=iphlpsvc/LanmanServer/netprofm ::add service dependencies

More information

On a standalone computer, the NetLogon Service should be set for manual startup.