How to fix WebSphere 7.0 on Windows 2003 that hangs on startup

WebSphere Today I spent several hours troubleshooting the fresh install of WebSphere 7.0 on Windows 2003. The server passed all post-installation steps successfully, but refused to start after the OS reboot. The last line in the server logs was “Server launched. Waiting for initialization status.”, and the actual server state was unclear – any attempt to start it anew claimed that the service was running, but the server console was not available.

It appears that the Windows service installation, which happens by default during setup time, was problematic. Once you remove the service and reboot the system, you can start WebSphere manually without any trouble.

Here is how to remove the Windows service:

  1. Go to the “bin” folder under WAS installation directory (usually “C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\bin”)
  2. Execute the following command: “WASService –remove <name-of-server-node>”

Typically, the name of server node is composed from the computer name with “Node01” suffix.
For example, the node name on “was70-win.mycompany.com” will probably be “was70-winNode01”.

Hat tip to this IBM DeveloperWorks community post for the hints!

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