2016 Database Mail stuck in Inactive

Question

I am trying to set up the database mail in SQL 2016.  I have tried several times and looked at many articles online.

I can stop and start the mail service and check the status and it will briefly show as receives_occurring, then it goes back to inactive.  I seem to be missing something simple.  I am doing this within SSMS by running a set of commands.

If anyone can provide some help, that would be greatly appreciated.

All test emails fail and no logs are present.

The emails sit in the queue waiting to be sent.

I have made sure to follow the setup instructions carefully and still I can't get this to work.

Kind regards

Tim

Answer 1

See this post:

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/feef4d67-afa1-468a-9ba7-ea3477edaf8e/db-mail-not-working-sql-2016?forum=sqlservicebroker

Get .NET 3.5 installed and restart the server.

Answer 2

Hi tim_siigroup,

This issue has been reported on Microsoft Connect. I also found a reddit thread suggests that the issue is configuration file for database mail is missing. 

As a workaround, you can also create the configuration file(DatabaseMail.exe.config) in \Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL13.INSTANCENAME\MSSQL\Binn\ with the content below:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
<startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true">
    <supportedRuntime version="v4.0"/>
    <supportedRuntime version="v2.0.50727"/>
</startup>
</configuration>

If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Regards,
Lin