SQL 2000 Agent running but not working Error 14258 on job ..

We have MS SQL Server 2000 running on a cluster. The SQL Agent shows
as running but no jobs are being ran as scheduled as of this past
weekend.

Stopping and restarting the agent via Service Manager did not fix the
issue neither did a dual reboot of both clustered servers. The agent
appears to be running but any attemp to start or even view a job
results in Error 14258: cannot perform this operation while SQL server
agent is starting. Try again later.

The SQL Agent log appears clean.

The threads I found at MS have not been helpful
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303287

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqltools/thread/4265278f...0e-4cf3

Best I can tell we are not using NT Fibers though I do not know where
to check in Windows itself but the option is not on in SQL Server.
Nor have we changed who the Agent service runs under nor made any
other changes recently.

Has anyone seen this and have a solution that can be shared?

-- Mark D Powell --

On Mar 26, 4:33 pm, Mark D Powell wrote:
> We have MS SQL Server 2000 running on a cluster.  The SQL Agent shows
> as running but no jobs are being ran as scheduled as of this past
> weekend.
>
> Stopping and restarting the agent via Service Manager did not fix the
> issue neither did a dual reboot of both clustered servers.  The agent
> appears to be running but any attemp to start or even view a job
> results in Error 14258: cannot perform this operation while SQL server
> agent is starting. Try again later.
>
> The SQL Agent log appears clean.
>
> The threads I found at MS have not been helpfulhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/303287
>
> http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqltools/thread/4265278...
>
> Best I can tell we are not using NT Fibers though I do not know where
> to check in Windows itself but the option is not on in SQL Server.
> Nor have we changed who the Agent service runs under nor made any
> other changes recently.
>
> Has anyone seen this and have a solution that can be shared?
>
> -- Mark D Powell --

We found the problem. Something had caused the default mail profile
program to change. We set this back and the agent resumed working
with a stop/re-start.

-- Mark D Powell --