Unable to start mail session (reason: Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlIMail.Server.Common.BaseException

This is a jim-dandy. You gotta read this one.

So I’m once again perusing the MSDN blogs looking for great stuff when I come across one from the CSS SQL Server Engineers about DBMail suddenly stops working (1).  This is significant because everybody and their dog uses sp_send_dbmail, right? Well just passing along the good news when had a double-take at the underlying cause for the posting and upcoming KB…some Einstein named a new column in one of the msdb tables “timeout”. Are you serious? LOL. This one has to take the cake. So this poor old sap who found the error probably spent countless hours looking for a performance issue because he or she saw the word “timeout” in the error, maybe thinking that something was up with the mail servers or authentication or such. Hahaha.

2009-11-03 22:57:37 - ? [129] SQLSERVERAGENT starting under Windows NT service control
2009-11-03 22:57:38 - ! [260] Unable to start mail session (reason: Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlIMail.Server.Common.BaseException: Mail configuration information could not be read from the database. ---> System.IndexOutOfRangeException: timeout
   at System.Data.ProviderBase.FieldNameLookup.GetOrdinal(String fieldName)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataReader.GetOrdinal(String name)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataReader.get_Item(String name)
   at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlIMail.Server.DataAccess.DataAccessAdapter.GetAccount(Int32 accountID)
   --- E)

Apparently the fix is to move up to the next cumulative update, but click the link below that I reference and make sure of your database version.

Lee

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How about "Error" for a column name next time, eh?  Or maybe "SSPIContext" or "OLEDBConnection"?  

(1) CSS Engineers. DBMail has Suddenly Stopped Working. Retrieved 12/18/09 from http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/archive/2009/12/17/dbmail-has-suddenly-stopped-working.aspx