PRB: SQLExecutive Does Not Respond to SCM; Error 2186 (183194)

SYMPTOMS

SQL Executive does not respond to Windows NT Service Control Manager (SCM). It fails, displaying error 2186 as follows:

Error 2186 The service is not responding to the control function.
Could not start the SQLExecutive service on \\Server.

CAUSE

This problem can occur if there is an ODBC core file version mismatch. The distribution task loads the ODBC Driver Manager under the process context of the SQLExecutive process. Therefore, the process fails when the ODBC components are mismatched.

WORKAROUND

To fix the version mismatch, perform the steps listed in the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

170769 : PRB: "ODBC Resource DLL Is a Different Version Than ..."

After installing the core components, you may want to check the SQL Executive process by doing the following:

Open a command prompt and go to the Mssql\Binn directory.
Type the following command to run SQL Executive:
sqlexec -c -v
Verify that SQL Executive starts successfully. Press CTRL+C to close the command prompt.
Start SQL Executive as a service and try to run a task.

MORE INFORMATION

It is also possible that while trying to apply cached operations from the Sqlcache.bin file, the service startup may time out. When you start SQL Executive from an application, it does not have the timeout limits as a service. If this is the case, you can either rename the Sqlcache.bin file to bypass the application of cached operations, or start from a command prompt first, to apply the cached operations without a timeout limit.