Commerce Server Management without properties and site not working on CS2002

I have a CS2002 with SP3 installation on Windows 2003 and SQL 2000.

The commerce site is suddenly not starting up anymore, and I get the following error:

Error: AuthManager(CommerceServer): SiteConfig: Property 's_AuthManager_EncryptionKey' , not found in Admin Database, for MS-Commerce-Site 'Shops'

Also, the site node in the Commerce Server MMC snap-in does not have any child nodes or properties anymore, as do the global resource nodes.

All resources and properties still seem to be present in the admin database. I know this sort of thing can happen when you have an incorrect csapp.ini, but this would not be the case here because this hasn't changed.

The only thing that might have had something to do with it is that I changed the "Maximum number of worker processes" in the site's AppPool configuration from 1 to 3 because of some performance issues. After this the problem started, unfortunately putting it back to 1 didn't solve it.

I am numerous configuration changes and iisresets and reboots further, but nothing gets the site working again.

Can anybody help me?

Thanks,

Jasper van der Sterren.

[1203 byte] By [JaspervanderSterren] at [2008-2-16]