One or more services have started or stopped unexpectedly

Applies to SharePoint 2016; not tested on other versions of SharePoint.  


Symptoms

 

Central Admin's Health Analyzer shows:

 

-        Title: One or more services have started or stropped unexpectedly.

-        Explanation: The following services are managed by SharePoint, but their running state does not match what SharePoint expects: c2wts

-        Remedy: To stop or start a service managed by SharePoint, use the SharePoint service management interface in the SharePoint Central Administration Site. If a service has crashed, restart the service manually on the affected servers by running “net start [service name]” from a command prompt.

 

Service status shows c2wts (Claims to Windows Token Service) is not running even though it’s set to “Startup type: Automatic”. When you try to start the service, it gives:

 

Windows could not start the c2wts service on local Computer. Error 2: The system cannot find the file specified.

 

Search servers have the startup type of the service set to Disabled by design. Hence, they are not listed in the Health Analyzer item.


Cause

 

Unknown. However, it occurred after Windows patching.


Resolution

 

Check the value of ImagePath registry item at HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\c2wts. If it’s not set to “C:\Program Files\Windows Identity Foundation\v3.5\c2wtshost.exe" including the double quotes, change it to that value:


Graphical user interface, text, application, email Description automatically generated

 

Reboot is not required.

 

Popular posts from this blog

October 2025 SharePoint CU Failed to Install After Applying September 2025 SharePoint CU

Image
[Tested on SharePoint 2016 only] Applying the September 2025 SharePoint Cumulative Updates to SharePoint On-Prem was a bit chaotic as it introduced a number of bugs. It would have been better if I had the option to skip it and go straight to the October CU. Stefan, the Sr. SharePoint Escalation Engineer at Microsoft, has summarized the issues very well on  his blog . While many of the issues have been fixed in the October CU release, the fix for the "installation of this package failed" error  was not included for those who had already applied the September CU before the fix was made. That is, the System and Local Service accounts have to be manually removed from the WSS_WPG and IIS_IUSRS groups before applying the October CU. Without this step, I encountered a new popup error that said: Error 2349. An internal error has occurred. ( ) Contact Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS) for assistance. For information about how to contact PSS, see PSS10R.CHM. Remedy Remove...
Read more

September 2025 SharePoint 2016 CU - Configuration Wizard failed

Image
[Applies  to SharePoint 2016; not tested on other versions of SharePoint] While the farm account is in the local admins group (regardless of being present in the  WSS_WPG  group), running the psconfigui.exe (SharePoint Configuration Wizard) or psconfig.exe with the farm account gets stuck at the last step (step 10 of 10). Associated behaviors are: CopySideBySideFiles_*.log showing the endless repetition of: “\16\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\accessrequestcontrol.debug.js Access is denied. Waiting 30 seconds… Retrying…”. Unable to close the Config Wizard by hitting the Cancel or X button on the GUI; it has to be killed in Task Manager. The “Upgrade Status” page on Central Admin, however, shows the green status “Succeeded” even though it's not. Diagnosis Microsoft has deployed the security hardening with the 2025 September CU. The farm service account can no longer be used interactively from now on. Previously, this was not a requirement, despite the documentation at  https://lear...
Read more

Broken Site Collection

Image
[Tested on SharePoint 2016 only] Suppose the following error occurs while creating a new site collection with a farm admin user account: ## Assume all declared variables are correct ## PS C:\FarmAdminUserAccount> New-SPSite -Url $spSite -Name $scName -Description $scDesc -ContentDatabase $cdb -QuotaTemplate $scQuota -Template $scTemplate -Language 1033 -OwnerAlias $scPrimaryAdmin -OwnerEmail $scPrimaryEmail -SecondaryOwnerAlias $scSecondaryAdmin -SecondaryEmail $scSecondaryEmail ********************** PS>CommandInvocation(Out-String): "Out-String" >> ParameterBinding(Out-String): name="InputObject"; value="Calling extension methods on object Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPContentDatabase+<>c__DisplayClass16 failed with exception(s): The UPDATE permission was denied on the object 'MSP_TVF_WEB_ADMIN', database 'WSS_Content_DbName', schema 'pjpub'." New-SPSite : Calling extension methods on object Microsoft.Sha...
Read more