I have 2 windows 2003 servers running exchange 2003 enterprise server editon. i have them setup in a front end back end configuration where the frontend server passes all the info to the backend databases. The front end accpets incomming mail but for some reason a few times a week the smtp service dies and the only way to get it going again is to restart the server. If you manually try to stop and start the service once it is hung up...it comes back with the error cannot stop or start in the selected state....therefore you have to reboot the server. This is a production server which makes it a real pain to have to reboot all the time. Any ideas? There are no messages in the event viewer at all. It is really baffling me.