You receive the following error message after Windows 2003 boots.

At least one service or driver failed during system startup.  Use Event Viewer to examine the event log for details.

However, when you view the Event View for more information no events indicating which service or driver failed to start are reported.

Cause:

The driver or service that is failing is not properly writing information to the Event Log.  The Network Load Balancing Driver is known to have this issue.

Solution:

You must manually review all services and drivers that start for failure and attempt to determine which is causing the error.

Method 1

Use the Services MMC and sort by Startup Type

Look for services that are set to Automatic but do not show as Started.  Compare any services found with other systems to determine if this “normal”.  For example, in the screenshot shown above it is normal forPerformance Logs and Alerts not to start even when configured as Automatic.

Method 2

Using Device Manager, enable Show Hidden Devices and look for Non-Plug and Play Drivers that may have issues.  An example is shown below.

If this does not show anything, boot the server into Safe Mode and repeat the above steps.  Take screen shots of the Non-plug and Play Drivers.  Then reboot normally and repeat the process, comparing against the screen shots from Safe Mode.  I have also seen various instances where problem Drivers have suddenly appeared after the server boots into Safe Mode and back to normal.

Method 3

Reboot the server and use the Enable Boot Logging option.  Review the %SystemRoot%\ntbootlog.txt file.

Using Regedit.exe search the following Registry Key for each driver filename that does not load:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services

You may need to research the various drivers to determine if they normally do not start, or if it is the actual driver causing the issue.  Using trial and error by disabling these drivers may also help determine if the driver not loading is causing the issue.

Recommended Actions

After you identify the driver or service that is failing you can do any of the following to correct the issue.

1) Determine and correct the underlying cause of the failure

2) Configure the Driver or Service as Disabled

a. Examples:

3) Remove or uninstall the Driver or Service

4) Manually delete the registry key for the Service or Driver

a. Backup the registry key before deleting it.

More Information:
The error may also be caused by a Service that is set to Manual but is started via some other mechanism on the server.  You may need to review all Manual services and/or configure them as Disabled via trial and error to determine which Service is the issue.