I came across an issue with a customer today that the Exchange Transport Service on Exchange 2007 could not be started anymore.

The following message can be found in the event log:
The worker process crashes on startup: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\ExchangeServer\Bin\edgetransport.exe. The service wants to be stopped.

If this is the case, the cause might be the mail queue, so the mailqueue must be renamed and a new queue folder created.

Steps to resolve the issue:

  1. Rename C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\TransportRoles\data\Queue folder to queue.old
  2. Create a new folder Queue
  3. Start the Microsoft Exchange Transport service again
  4. It should run now
  5. You can clean up the old mail.que file

Microsoft indicates a possible cause for this problem as a so-called mail bomb.
A huge number of e-mail messages sent to one destination or an e-mail with an extremely large attached file. Mail bombs are sent to antagonize their recipients and/or to cause them problems by filling up their disks and overloading the system.