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I've been unable to start the Exim daemon after installing it in Cygwin on Windows 10.

At the end of the exim-config setup, the daemon fails with this message:

Do you want to start the exim daemon as a service now? (yes/no) yes

cygrunsrv: Error starting a service: QueryServiceStatus:  Win32 error 1062:

The service has not been started.



ERROR: Could not start the daemon.



INFO: The exim log files are in /var/log/exim.



WARNING: The default permissions are only suitable for a casual environment.

    See /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/exim-X-Y.README for how to adjust them.



When everything else fails,

    read /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/exim-X-Y.README,

    or look up the documentation on www.exim.org.

Many happy mailings :)

The following log files exist at /var/log/exim:

$ dir -l /var/log/exim

total 4

-rw-rw-r-- 1 cyg_server Administrators    0 Jan 13 16:48 cygrunsrv_err.log

-rw-rw-r-- 1 cyg_server Administrators    0 Jan 13 16:48 cygrunsrv_out.log

-rw-rw-rw- 1 User1      User1          1499 Jan 14 09:49 exim_main.log

The first two are empty, and the third has no relevant information.

Further attempts to start the service after running the config fail with this message:

$ net start exim

The exim service is starting.

The exim service could not be started.



The service did not report an error.



More help is available by typing NET HELPMSG 3534.



$ NET HELPMSG 3534



The service did not report an error.

The windows event viewer has this message in its application logs:

The description for Event ID 0 from source exim cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.



If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.



The following information was included with the event: 



exim: PID 2708: service `exim' failed: signal 6 raised

Any thoughts on what this error might be or what further diagnostics to run? Thank you!

After fiddling with the very same error for about an hour I launched the current setup-x86.exe from https://cygwin.com/setup-x86.exe and checked "Reinstall" for exim and openssh-server.

Then I ran exim-config as Domain Admin and reconfigured the service (again).

The service runs without issues now.

The issue for me (server 2016 and 2019) was the service Log On user. The setup script has you creating and using the cyg_server user with its special permissions. But it does not seem to be enough these days.

You can see the fault by running the command: exim -bd -q15m -v -d

Mine said unable to change setuid to x and y..., could not write to logs... This is a permissions issue.

To avoid this: Run exim as a service only, and use the Windows inbuilt "Local Service" as follows. In services, exim, Log On tab, select Local System account.