This blog post is about a situation where after windows patching the SQL Server service and SQL Server Agent services will not start automatically but will manually.
At a client site they had recently patched the servers things went swimmingly except the SQL Server services would not start.
Whilst automatic the services would not start
Manually starting the services by right clicking | choosing start worked….
We tried a few things:
Making the services Automatic (Delayed)
Increasing the service pipeline timeout from 30 seconds to 60 seconds
But nothing worked.
Looking at the event logs I (eventually) found this:
Event ID 7000:
The mssqlSERVER service failed to start due to the following error:
The account name is invalid or does not exist, or the password is invalid for the account name specified.
Which is bizarre as the service account had been used for months but after each reboot the services had to be manually started. GPO and other things had been blamed but no one could actually find out why.
Just for a laugh I decided to “rename” the service account.
From svcSQL@<domain> to <domain>\svcSQL
Rebooted and it worked.
Just to make sure it wasn’t a false positive I left the SQL Server Agent service how it was and it did not start.
<domain>\<service account> works but why…?
As to why this is the case I’m not sure. To date I had always set up my SQL Server services with <domain>\<service account> so I have never stumbled across this until now.
But I don’t care too much it means that the client can reboot their server and know SQL Server will come back…
Yip.