Error: SQL server failed to communicate with Full-Text Service

Hello,

I've enabled full-text indexing on one of my tables, and the following query used to work:

SELECT *
FROM TempAttachment
WHERE CONTAINS(attachment, 'text')

However, now I get the following error:

Msg 9955, Level 16, State 1, Line 1SQL server failed to communicate with Full-Text Service (msftesql). The system administrator must make sure that same service account is used for both services and the service account has the permission to auto start the full-text service.

I've checked the configuration and verified that both accounts are the same. I've restarted the services, and tried rebooting, and still no luck. I did a search on this error, and found this page from MSDN, which doesn't help me much: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa337365.aspx.

Has anybody come across this before? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Just want to be sure, which 2 services' account did you update?

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Thanks for your reply.

I didn't update any settings. I went to SQL Server Configuration Manager and selected "SQL Server 2005 Services" on the left menu. On the right side, I right-clicked and viewed properties of "SQL Server FullText Search" and "SQL Server". They both have the same log-on account (Local System).

This morning, I tried to back up my database and got a clue about this issue when the back up failed. It says "The backup of full-text catalog is not permitted because it is not online. Check errorlog file for the reason that full-text catalog became offline and bring it online..." I searched the error logs for my table name and didn't find anything (other than the backup failing because of it). Any ideas? Thanks.

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Okay, I found the problem!

Somehow, I didn't have permissions to the directory where the full-text data was being stored. (I'm unclear on how this happened - maybe someone else can reply if they have an idea?)

First, run the following query to find the path to your full-text catalog:

SELECT * FROM sysfulltextcatalogs

Then check the permissions for the directory or directories identified.