alerts not working….again…..damn

Out of the blue, sharepoint alerts stopped working.
The symptom was strange:
Subscriptions to alerts DID work but subsequent alerts did not.
I looked everywhere.
Finally I found something in the sql table called dbo.TimerLock. Timer lock by a front end server.
I rebooted the server and ran the following commands:
1.stsadm -o getproperty -pn search-alerts-enabled
2.stsadm -o getproperty -pn search-immediate-alerts
3.stsadm -o getproperty -pn search-daily-alerts
4.stsadm -o setproperty -pn search-alerts-enabled -pv “Yes”
5.stsadm -o setproperty -pn search-immediate-alerts -pv “Every 5 minutes between 0 and 59”
6.stsadm -o setproperty -pn search-daily-alerts -pv “Everyday between 00:00:00 and 05:00:00”