Help and Support Service Missing - 2003 Server

[Richard Tubb]

Using Windows Server 2003 SP1, we're experiencing a problem wherein the Help
& Support feature won't start.

If you click Start > Help & Support, an error saying "Windows cannot open
Help and Support because a system service is not running. To fix this
problem, start the service named 'Help and Support'"

Unfortunately, no such service exists. Going through services.msc shows no
"Help and Support" service at all.

Googling on this problem shows a lot of solutions for this issue under
Windows XP - and I've tried the majority of these (registry fixes,
re-installation of Help & Support, etc.) under 2003 SP1 anyway, but without
success.

Running SFC /scannow produces no errors. Re-installing Help & Support by
using the install "pchealth.inf" from in C:\Windows\inf - installs
correctly, but the above error persists.

Can anyone suggest any other options for regaining the Help & Support
feature?

[Richard Tubb]

For anyone interested - I resolved this problem by using the instructions at
http://blogs.chron.com/helpline/arch...nd_suppor.html.

This involved downloading a Registry Fix
(http://windowsxp.mvps.org/reg/helpsvc.zip) to make the "Help & Support"
Service show up again under the Services MMC.

[bmathison]

SP2 causes this issues for some. It can be resolved by manually reinstalling the service. In these cases, the registry fix for XP may not work if this is the case, but this may (derrived from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937055):

Click Start, click Run, type cmd in the Open box, and then click OK.
at the cmd prompt, type in %windir%\PCHealth\HelpCtr\Binaries and then press ENTER. Type in the following, and then press ENTER after each command:
HelpSvc.exe /regserver /svchost netsvcs /RAInstall
HSCUpd.exe -i hscmui.cab
HSCUpd.exe -i hscsp_s3.cab

Note The following commands do not apply to some language versions of Windows Server 2003:
HSCUpd.exe -i hscmui.cab
HSCUpd.exe -i hscsp_s3.cab
The reason is that the Hscmui.cab compressed file is not included in some language versions
of Windows Server 2003, such as the Japanese version of Windows Server 2003.

[Slymo2002]

Brilliant thank you, this saved me bags of time over someother advice. However I did on stage 3 find that it didn't work. After a quick inspection of the folder I found that the last command in my case was.

HSCUpd.exe -i hscsp_l3.cab

Just thought you might want to know if anyones tried it & it's not processed the last one right.

Thanks again for the help.