Office Communications Server Front-End service terminated

We deployed Office Communications Server 2007 last year – a great communications tool to have within your enterprise. Few weeks ago, Microsoft released update (KB974571) for Office Communicator as well as Windows Server 2003 which caused the OCS’s front-end service to terminate and not start.

The even viewer shows error logs like this:

The Office Communications Server Front-End service terminated with service-specific error 3286842403 (0xC3E93C23).

In order to fix this issue, you would need to go to Control Panel > Add / Remove Programs > Check the box that says “Show Updates” and look for update: KB974571, then click on REMOVE.

After Windows is done removing the update, you will need to reboot the OCS server. If you have automatic windows updates enabled on that server, please make sure you disable automatic updates otherwise the update will be installed again. If you use Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) to deploy windows updates then you would need to make sure this particular update is not pushed to the servers.

I hope this was helpful and you are able to fix Office Communications Server Front-End service terminated error message with the OCS 2007. If you have any questions or comments please be sure to post them in the forum.