Question : Websphere portal system no longer starting

I have a Websphere V 5 system running on a Windows 2000 Server.  I have inherited this system form the previous regime.  I have been charged with keeping it up until it can be replaced.

The portal backend however no longer starts up.  In the past whenever there were issues, a simple reboot would bring the portal back online without issue.  Things have changed this time though.  The WebSphere_Portal instance simply no longer starts properly and the service puts itself in a stopped state.  Two errors are produced:

Windows Application Log - Event ID 109

Could not determine the process id of the java process. Changing the IBMWAS5Service - IBM WebSphere Portal service status to the "stopped" state.  To prevent this error, try recreating this service with the -logRoot parameter.  The value of the logRoot parameter should be the directory in which the server's .pid file is created.

Windows System Log - Event ID 7023

The IBM WebSphere Application Server V5 - IBM WebSphere Portal service terminated with the following error:
Cannot create another system semaphore.

I went to Services and attempted to restart the Websphere portal.  The service would be up for a few seconds and then stop again producing the same errors as above.

I went and killed the existing Java.exe processes that were found in the Task Manager and attempted to start WebSphere_Portal and server1 instances from the command line.  Which reported:

[9/29/09 15:26:08:326 CDT]  8f2e7a8 AdminTool     A ADMU3000I: Server WebSphere_Portal open for e-business; process id is 3516

Still the web clients report:

An error occured attempting to communicate with IBM Lotus Workplace Web Content Management Server. Please review the Portlet settings. (Response code: 0)

I was able to verify that the system is using IBM's java and not the windows java.

Here's the thing:  I have not made any kind of configuration changes to this machine in over 2 years.  I do not understand why now it has started to fail.

Please help.

Answer : Websphere portal system no longer starting

Something is supposed to be up, and listening on port 1098 that isn't there...