I have a client that has QuickBooks Database loaded onto their server. The other day they called and reported they could not get into the program. I checked into the issue and found that I could open QuickBooks but not open a database. The software has been running for over a year with no issues till now.

These are some of the Symptoms of the issue

• When you run the QuickBooks Database Server Manager, and click Start Scan, it scans the folders, then get an error: QuickBooks network diagnostics failed. Resolve errors and retry.
• QuickBooksDB26 system service starts and then immediately stops, giving the message, “The QuickBooksDB26 service on Local Computer started and then stopped. Some services stop automatically if they are not in use by other services or programs.”
• Windows Logs under Application: “The description for Event ID 1 from source SQLANY 16.0 cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer. If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event. The following information was included with the event: QuickBooksDB26
  Unable to initialize requested communication links”

After much research and reading many articles of how users and intuit tech support was uninstalling and reinstalling with no success I finally found an article that said Stop the DNS server, Start QuickBooks DB Server and finally Restart DNS Server. After some further research I found that QB Database was defaulting to port 55333 and DNS is likely using this port on the server.

To permanently fix the issue:
Stop the DNS service, and the QuickBooks service.
Reserve the port using netsh from an elevated command prompt
netsh int ipv4 add excludedportrange protocol=udp startport=55333 numberofports=5
then start both services