After a fresh install of Lync 2013 Standard Edition onto a Windows 2012 server, and its been running for about 2 weeks I may add…I came across the following issue
Issue
After a reboot of the Lync Standard Edition Server I found that the Lync Server Front End Server (RTCSRV) wouldn’t start. It just sat there on “Starting”
Further Symptoms
Event ID 32174
Interestingly the Event ID reports that resetting the Quorum is a potential solution, not true in my case.
Event ID 32178
NOTE
There were many other Events triggered by the inability of numerous processes being able to connect etc etc
Cause
A common cause of this issue is if non self-signed certificates are imported into Trusted Root Certification Authorities instead of Intermediate Certification Authorities. Although this was not an issue in Windows Server 2008, Windows 2012 requires a high level of trust dependant on certification authentication.The result is that HTTP communication between Lync servers is broken.
Solution
Check the Trusted Root Certification Authority Store for any NON self-signed certificates. Self signed certificates have the same value for the Issued To and Issued By field. The screen shot below shows the highlighted certificate as not being self-signed (whilst residing in the Trusted Root Certification Authority Store)
Get-Childitem cert:LocalMachineroot -Recurse | Where-Object {$_.Issuer -ne $_.Subject} | Format-List * | Out-File “c:computer_filtered.txt”
