MS09-012 and ISA Server Standard Edition 14109 Failures

We've received several reports of ISA Server Standard Edition restart failures after installation of April's security updates.

<Update>
ISA Server 2006 update released
ISA Server 2004 update released
</Update>

The error message observed in this circumstance is: "Event ID 14109 (The ISA Server Standard Edition cannot run. Either the server is using more than 4 processors....). "

Notes:
1.
this specific problem only affects ISA Server Standard Edition and only when it's running on a computer that has a total of more than 4 CPU cores.
2. this issue does not affect Forefront TMG (MBE)

The problem occurs when you install the MS09-012 patch under very specific circumstances.  The Windows Sustained Engineering team is producing a detailed explanation of this behavior for the MS09-012 bulletin articles and will post that as soon as it's ready.

In the meantime, you can employ the following workaround to put your ISA Server back in service:

1. log on to the computer using a local administrator account
2. click the Start button, select Run
3. in the Run dialog, enter cmd and click OK
4. in the command window
    a. type attrib -a -s -r -h c:\boot.ini and hit Enter
    b. type notepad c:\boot.ini and hit Enter
5. at the end of the line under [operating systems] , enter /numprocs=4
    Note: if you have multiple boot entries, you should add this entry to the end of the line that is used to boot the default OS instance where ISA Server runs
6. save the boot.ini file
7. in the command window, type attrib +a +s +r +h c:\boot.ini and hit Enter
8. reboot your computer

HTH,
Jim Harrison, Program Manager FF Edge CS