I had a strange experience recently. I tried to connect to a SQL Server instance and Management Studio stopped working and finally Windows Vista crashed. I couldn't start SQL Server after restart. I got the following messages in Windows Application Error Log:
- TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0xffffffff, status code 0x80.
- TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0xffffffff, status code 0x1.
- Could not start the network library because of an internal error in the network library. To determine the cause, review the errors immediately preceding this one in the error log.
- SQL Server could not spawn FRunCM thread. Check the SQL Server error log and the Windows event logs for information about possible related problems.
Solution:
- Set SQL instance to run as Local System Account
- Stop SQL Server
- Open "SQL Server Surface Area Configuration" and disable remote connection
- Start SQL Server
Now it should work.
Resolution:
There are very useful blog entries in SQL Protocols blog: Error Messages of SQL Server 2005 Start Up Failure, and Understanding server-side protocol initialization error codes
Messages from 2 to 4 are generic start up failure messages, you can ignore them. The only meaningful message is:
TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0xffffffff, status code 0x80.
Error code 0xffffffff means nothing. If error code was 0x7e, we could do the following:
- 0x7e = 126
- c:\> net helpmsg 126
The specified module could not be found.
We have the reason now. Let's see what is status code 0x80.
| Status Code (Hexa) | Status Code (Dec) | Protocol Area |
| 0x03 0x40-0x4F | 3 (0x03) 64-79 (0x40-0x4F) | Shared Memory |
| 0x09-0x1E | 6-30 (0x09-0x1E) | TCP/IP |
| 0x1F-0x23 | 31-35 (0x1F-0x23) | DAC |
| 0x35 | 53 (0x35) | Named Pipes |
| 0x36 | 54 (0x36) | VIA |
| 0x70-0x7F | 112-127 (0x70-0x7F) | HTTP |
| 0x38 | 56 (0x38) | SSL |
| 0x90-0x9F | 144-159 (0x90-0x9F) | General |
So it means I have a problem with SSL. Some typical, more specific status codes:
| Status Code | Description |
| 0x03 | Error starting shared memory support |
| 0x04 | All protocols disabled |
| 0x0A | Unable to initialize the TCP/IP listener |
| 0x1C | Server configured to listen on a specific IP address in a cluster environment |
| 0x1E | Duplicate IP address detected in network |
| 0x35 | Error starting named pipe support |
| 0x36 | Error starting VIA support |
| 0x38 | Error obtaining or using the Certificate for SSL |
| 0x3A | Unable to initialize the communication listeners |
| 0x40 | Unable to initialize the Shared Memory listener |
| 0x50 | Unable to initialize the Named Pipe listener |
| 0x60 | Unable to initialize the VIA listener |
| 0x70 | Unable to initialize the HTTP listener |
| 0x80 | Unable to initialize SSL support |
