How To Fix SQL Server TCP Port is Already in Use Error After July 2018 Updates

The Microsoft Windows Updates for July 2018 have been riddled with issues (Azure AD Connect Sync Health High CPU, Exchange Server 2010 Mail Flow Issues and DHCP Failover Issues just to name a few). Another error that users have been experiencing has been with Microsoft SQL Server saying “TCP Port is already in use”. Microsoft has released hotfixes for this issue and you have two options that you can install on your servers.

According to Microsoft:

For example, if your system has KB4338815, you can install either KB4338831 or KB4345424 to fix the regression. The difference between the two is that KB4345424 provides only the fix for the regression, whereas KB4338831 includes all of the fixes from KB4338815 as well as some additional quality improvements as a preview of the next Monthly Rollup update (which includes the fix for the regression).

The errors you might see include:

Error: 26023, Severity: 16, State: 1.
Server TCP provider failed to listen on [ ]. Tcp port is already in use.

Error: 17182, Severity: 16, State: 1.
TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0x2740, status code 0xa. Reason: Unable to initialize the TCP/IP listener. Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted.

Error: 17182, Severity: 16, State: 1.
TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0x2740, status code 0x1. Reason: Initialization failed with an infrastructure error. Check for previous errors. Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted.

Error: 17826, Severity: 18, State: 3.
Could not start the network library because of an internal error in the network library. To determine the cause, review the errors immediately preceding this one in the error log.

Error: 17120, Severity: 16, State: 1.
SQL Server could not spawn FRunCommunicationsManager thread. Check the SQL Server error log and the Windows event logs for information about possible related problems.

Error: 26075, Severity: 16, State: 1.
Failed to start a listener for virtual network name ‘‘. Error: 10048.

The SQL Server () service entered the stopped state.

The SQL Server () service terminated with the following service-specific error: Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted.

Cluster resource ‘SQL Server ()’ of type ‘SQL Server’ in clustered role ‘SQL Server ()’ failed. Based on the failure policies for the resource and role, the cluster service may try to bring the resource online on this node or move the group to another node of the cluster and then restart it. Check the resource and group state using Failover Cluster Manager or the Get-ClusterResource Windows PowerShell cmdlet.

The Cluster service failed to bring clustered role ‘SQL Server (

)’ completely online or offline. One or more resources may be in a failed state. This may impact the availability of the clustered role.

The configuration changes to the availability group listener were completed, but the TCP provider of the instance of SQL Server failed to listen on the specified port [:]. This TCP port is already in use. Reconfigure the availability group listener, specifying an available TCP port. For information about altering an availability group listener, see the “ALTER AVAILABILITY GROUP (Transact-SQL)” topic in SQL Server Books Online. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 19486)

Error: 19476, Severity: 16, State: 4.
The attempt to create the network name and IP address for the listener failed. If this is a WSFC availability group, the WSFC service may not be running or may be inaccessible in its current state, or the values provided for the network name and IP address may be incorrect. Check the state of the WSFC cluster and validate the network name and IP address with the network administrator. Otherwise, contact your primary support provider.
The Service Broker endpoint is in disabled or stopped state.

Error: 26023, Severity: 16, State: 1.
Server TCP provider failed to listen on [ ]. Tcp port is already in use.

Error: 26075, Severity: 16, State: 1.
Failed to start a listener for virtual network name ‘:’. Error: 10048.
Stopped listening on virtual network name ‘:’. No user action is required.

Error: 10800, Severity: 16, State: 1.
The listener for the WSFC resource ‘’ failed to start, and returned error code 10048, ‘Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted.‘. For more information about this error code, see “System Error Codes” in the Windows Development Documentation.

Error: 19452, Severity: 16, State: 1.
The availability group listener (network name) with Windows Server Failover Clustering resource ID ‘

’, DNS name ‘’, port failed to start with a permanent error: 10048. Verify port numbers, DNS names and other related network configuration, then retry the operation.

The table below lists the hotfixes that Microsoft released for each operating system:

For Windows 7/Server 2008 R2

For Windows Server 2012

For Windows 8.1/Server 2012 R2