Cannot start service SPAdmin on computer .

Had this error crop up while trying to create a new farm last night:

Cannot Start service SPAdmin on Computer .

I was trying to add a new server to an existing farm, and what would happen is the SharePoint Config wizard would bomb out at step 2 (Connecting to the database). It would then log the indicated error. We were also getting some "Cannot connect to Database as user NT_AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS" in the event log.

 

When the "Connect to Database" message appears, the system is performing the following tasks:

• Creating the security groups on the servers
• Creating / updating the services on the server (including security)
• Creating the web applications and web sites
• Copying across all of the custom Solutions
• And probably some other stuff I can't see

Doing this takes time (especially if the farm contains a lot of this additional content). As a result, the request to start the timer service is killed off before it gets a chance to properly start.

 

The solution was to create the following 2 keys in the registry:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control

add/modify DWORD value ServicesPipeTimeout to 60000 (60 seconds)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control

add/modify STRING value WaitToKillServiceTimeout to 120000 (120 seconds)

Bill Baer from Microsoft had the answer on his blog - Option 4 on this page - http://blogs.technet.com/wbaer/archive/2007/10/15/kb934525-troubleshooting.aspx. Don't forget to reboot after applying the registry changes!

Brad