Sql Server 2008r2 Replication Snapshot Agent Hang I am setting up a new merge publication, but I can not get the snapshot agent to run successfully.  In fact, I can not run any snapshot agents for any of the other publications on this server now.  This is effecting transactional and merge publications

When running a snapshot, I get the "Starting agent." status returned and then the occasional "agent has not logged a message in 10 minutes" messages. 

I've also tried generating a snapshot from the command line: 


I never get any errors nor is the c:\repllog.txt log file ever created.  It feels like something mysterious is blocking the snapshot executable pretty much on start up.  Any ideas?
I've not set up Merge Replication before but I do have a fair amount of experience working with Transactional and Snapshot Replication.

This gets me every time I set up a new Subscription or Publication.  Make sure your passwords are correct.  I will typically get this same type error every single time, then I have to go and test to make sure they are correct, and guess what, even though I thought I entered them correctly, I didn't.

A good test is to try to connect to the SQL server using the account/password you are using in the replication environment.  

Once you've made the change, if any, attempt to restart the desired replication agent.  I've occasionally had to restart the SQL Server Agent as well, if it was royally screwed up.

Hopefully this is a good starting place.  Best of luck in getting this resolved.

Regards,
Tom