Agent Xps getting disabled automatically

In one of SQL Server 2012 server, agent Xps is getting disabled automatically. There is no set pattern for the same and the issue started all of a sudden. Through profiler it was found that application named SQL AGent- Enable\disable Agent Xps is disabling the XPs. And the later is enabled by SQL Agent-Initial BootProbe.

I had a similar problem that I just resolved. Turned out, a new group policy had been applied to our server. This group policy disallowed domain users access to the D:, E:, & F: drives. Our SQL Server Agent was configured to write out its error log to the E: drive. As the Log On account for the SQL Server Agent service was a domain based account, SQL Server Agent was now unable to write to its log file. It died immediately at service start up. It was very frustrating in that we saw nothing in the Windows Event Viewer other than that the service started up and then stopped.

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#59514, answer score: 3