Today you came into your office and your phone rang endlessly. It seems that the entire company is trying to reach you because “THEY CANT SIGN IN TO THEIR COMMUNICATOR”.
You log in to your server and found that FRONT END service is STOPPED. You restarted the service but failed. Checked the EVENT LOG and found that an error Source: Schannel.
And dig futher and found these errors:
Source: OCS Server
Category: 1000
Event : 12290
You did a quick dnsflush and tried again to restart the service thinking that it might just be your certificate provider but no its dead. If you had this problem I have had it today.
Well lets get to the point. Browse to your EVENT log on your OCS / LCS and look for errors. If you have something like this:
Description:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: OCS Server
Event Category: (1000)
Event ID: 12290
Date: 10/16/2009
Time: 7:52:47 AM
User: N/A
Description:
The evaluation period for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 has expired. Please upgrade from the evaluation version to the full released version of the product.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Then whats causing this is KB974571 (MS09-056: Vulnerabilities in CryptoAPI could allow spoofing) This update will cause the LCS or OCS server to show running with the evaluation version and then noting it as expired. Your Front End Server will indicate that it is stopped while other services is running. We ran LCS 2007r2 but i believe it applied to LCS 2005 as well.
Uninstalling the patch is the only way to currently fix this issue. Delaying the install of KB974571 is recommended.
Afterward rebooting your server will solves your problem momentarily.
IMPORTANT : DO NOT LET YOUR SERVER INSTALL THE UPDATE AGAIN TILL MICROSOFT GET THIS FIXED UP.
Otherwise everyone will ring your phone again. If your have WSUS you can decline/delay the update for install. I’m sure just like me it saved my day and now I can enjoy my cup of coffee again. I hope this saves your day too.