MOSS 2007 Installation - Could not access the Search service configuration database

I had some trouble configuring the Windows SharePoint Services Search Service during a MOSS 2007 installation. When starting the service I hit the following error message:

Could not access the Search service configuration database

In the Application Event log the following error was shown:

The filename or extension is too long. 0x800700ce

This problem is caused by the server names in use being too long. It is no good trying to change the name of the database server to be the Netbios name (rather than FQDN) within the Windows SharePoint Services Search Service configuration, you need to change the name of the server registered to perform the Search service.

Before doing this please ensure you take a full backup of your MOSS site collections (if you have any, in my case I didn't as it was a clean install):

stsadm.exe -o backup -url <http://hostname> -filename backup.dat
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/889236

After the backup perform the following steps to register your search (perhaps also WFE/Index) server using stsadm.exe to invoke the "renameserver" command option.

Open a command prompt window and navigate to the folder where stsadm.exe sits. Normally "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN".

Use the renameserver command as follows, replacing and with the new and old names of your server:

stsadm -o renameserver -newservername -oldservername

That should do it.

I am told that this command is safe to run as part of your configuration if necessary, although I would recommend you follow the setup procedure in the following site though to avoid it.
http://mindsharpblogs.com/bill/archive/2006/06/27/1153.aspx