Bind service issue on Windows

Hello! I am hoping you all can help me with an issue I am experiencing with BIND on Windows.

I am running BIND9.6.0-P1 on Windows Server 2003 Standard. I installed BIND, created a 'named' service account, and everything worked fine. Then, after a restart, nothing worked correctly.

BIND will not start normally as a service under the named account. This account has the privilege to log on as service, and no group memberships (just as I have always done on Windows).

BIND will start from the command line (run: ".\named -f" or ".\named -g") when the command line is run as the named account.

BIND will run from both the command line and as a service, when run as the Administrator account, but the service will not run under the SYSTEM account or other users in the Administrators group.

After reading some of the posts on here (forums.devshed.com/dns-36/bet-you-want-to-setup-a-dns-server-huh-141940.html), to make sure I hadn't missed anything obvious, I saw a line that mentioned running "named -g". I gave this a try, and with this parameter, BIND will run as a service under the named account. Reading the documentation on BIND suggests to me that this makes it run in the foreground (eg non-daemon), so I'm not sure exactly what is going on.

I have logging enabled in BIND. When I run it from the command line, the logs all look normal (no errors). When I try to run the service, i get the following 4 entries in the Windows Application event log:
> starting BIND 9.6.0-P1
> built with default
>found 8 CPUs, using 8 worker threads
>Faulting application named.exe, version 0.0.0.0, faulting module msvcr80.dll, version 8.0.50727.3053, fault address 0x0001500a.

I am not seeing any other BIND-related logs showing up in the event logs. Nothing gets logged to BIND's log files when the service fails to start.

I'm guessing this may be a permission issue of sorts, but since the service is just running named.exe (no params), why would it run fine in the command line as the same user?

For reference, I have BIND installed to "D:\server\bind" (with subsequent bin, etc, and zones folders. The user named has full read/write/modify permissions to all of these directories and files.

I have also uninstalled, erased the directories and reinstalled several times. I even copied my configuration files from a known working server, with the same results.

== named.conf =====
options {
directory "D:\server\bind\zones";
allow-transfer { none; };
recursion no;
version "";
};

logging {
channel activity_log {
file "d:\server\logs\named.log" versions 3 size 5m;
severity debug;
print-time yes;
print-severity yes;
print-category yes;
};
category default { activity_log; };
category xfer-in { activity_log; };
category xfer-out { activity_log; };
category notify { activity_log; };
category security { activity_log; };
category update { activity_log; };
};

zone "hopkinsprogramming.net" IN {
type master;
file "db.hopkinsprogramming.net.txt";
allow-transfer { none; };
};

key "rndc-key" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "<<snip>>";
};

controls {
inet 127.0.0.1 port 953
allow { 127.0.0.1; } keys { "rndc-key"; };
};
=====

Any help you all can offer would be greatly appreciated!

Have you granted the new named account Log on as a service privileges.

http://windowsserver.trainsignal.com/install-bind-dns-on-windows-web-server-2008

Yes, the named account (as well as the other accounts I tried) have been granted that right.

Sorry... I see that in the original post now.

Good luck.

I am still looking for a solution to this... any other thoughts?