COMMAND

    RRAS

SYSTEMS AFFECTED

    WinNT with SP5

PROBLEM

    David R. Bivens  found following.   There appears to  be a problem
    when NT  SP5 is  installed on  a machine  that also  has Routing &
    Remote Access  Services (RRAS)  installed and  running in anything
    other  than  pure  "LAN  routing"  mode.   A Compaq Proliant 5000,
    3-processor, with NT 4.0 SP4, MS Proxy 2, IIS4, SQL 6.5, and  RRAS
    running only  the TCP/IP  protocol had  been stable  in production
    for several months.  After  installing Service Pack 5, RRAS  would
    not  start.   Visible  in  the  system  event log were RRAS events
    20023 ("Remote Access Server Security Failure.  The security agent
    has  rejected  the  Remote  Access  server's  request to start the
    service on this computer on  LANA x"), one for each  NIC, followed
    by failure of the RRAS service.

    Also  seen  were  events  20081  ("Remote  Access  Server Security
    Failure.  Could  not reset lana  x (the error  code is the  data).
    Security check not  performed"), but these  have been seen  before
    and do not seem  to be fatal.   There were no articles  in TechNet
    or  the  knowledge  base  that  accurately  describes the problem,
    although a couple came close.

    As  an  experiment,  while  waiting  for  an  MS  callback,  David
    installed the  demand-dial routing  component of  RRAS on  another
    server that did not have Proxy.   It came up perfectly.  Then,  he
    installed SP5 and,  lo and behold,  event 20023 and  RRAS failure.
    He  removed  SP5  using  the  standard uninstall procedure an RRAS
    became   operational,   albeit   with   several   20081  messages.
    He restored the other machine's $NtServicePackUninstall$ directory
    from a  backup tape  and ran  the SP5  uninstall.  After rebooting
    (and  manually  adding  a  whole  bunch  of  static  routes,  WINS
    settings, DHCP scopes, etc.), RRAS once again functioned properly.

SOLUTION

    Removing SP5 seems to fix  this, but removing it opens  more holes
    than imagined...