Do you have trouble starting or stopping your “Windows SharePoint Services Web Application” in Central administration?
Nothing happens when you try to administer this in Central Administration but you can use stsadm to jumstart it.
To stop the service you use the following command:
stsadm -o provisionservice -action stop -servicetype SPWebService
And to start the service you use the following command:
stsadm -o provisionservice -action start -servicetype SPWebService
If they fail you will always get much better response (exception messages) than in Central administration so hopefully you can go further with the issue based upon the stsadm response.
By Indra
SharePoint Architect