I thought I'd log today's headache in case 1) someone else experiences it
and gets help from my account or 2) someone can shed some light on what's
going on.

Problem #1:
-------------
Today I come in and when I go to our sharepoint's main home web page, I get
the prompt for authentication instead of what normally occurs, which is NTLM
pass-thru. I'm thinking, uh-oh, what's going on.

To see if it's just my system or everything, I go to a couple of other
machines to check -- yes, they're all-of-a-sudden asking for authentication
too.

So I TermServ into the box, looking through event logs. I also checked my
emails from yesterday because I know I used our SPPS server all day (as well
as many of our users), and I saw that the last subscription notification I
received was 4:07pm. I'm subscribed to the entire workspace, so I get a lot
of email and expect notifications through the night as people update their
files.

Here's what I found (not much)

- backups ran like normal (4 events)
- lots of normal "informational" events about the searches, scecli, mssci,
etc
- two DCOM errors from 7am yesterday morning about
"Access denied attempting to launch a DCOM server"
(there are a lot of these for months, always in pairs, so it's not a
new error. Not sure what it's trying to access) Exact:
Access denied attempting to launch a DCOM Server. The server is:
{gobbledegook}
the user is SYSTEM/NT AUTHORITY, SID=S-1-5-18

I don't see anything else in the different logs, so since it's 10 mins
before most people come into work, I decide to restart all the services.

Problem #2:
-------------
When I attempt that, it turns out the SMTP service wasn't running any more
(weird). Also, when I attempted to restart the sharepoint service, I got
system error 1058.

So I reboot the box. A min/two later, the system comes up and all is rosy
(meaning the web pages are working without the auth pop-up).

I then see this in the event log:

The Exchange IFS failed to map drive ?:. Please free drive ?: to use
Exchange IFS.

Microsoft article Q296791 tells me to ignore that message, so I move on.

I don't know where else to look to see why my system starting having
problems. I don't know when the auth boxes started popping up, and the
event logs don't tell me anything else.

The IIS logs right before I restarted show 401's for the http://server/wksp
and also PROPFIND's for Workspace Applications that resulted in 401's and
207's. I'm not sure if they're related or not.

MS says system error 1058 means a service is disabled and can't be started.
Huh? I go and check, and SMTP service is disabled! I'm confused, because
I've received notifications since the system booted. I go in and change a
file, no notification. I set the service to automatic and start it, change
a file, and I get a notification (both).

I also notice there are some "warnings" from the Microsoft Search / Gatherer
about two of the fileserver content sources, and that the "Notifications for
the scope \\fileserver\share are not active. The specified network name is
no longer available". I don't know if that's related or not. I'm trying to
think if anything else could be related (changes in A/D, new systems,
network issues) but can't.

Any suggestions?