You're breaking the MBean rules. You shouldn't expect some dependency to be started in your create lifecycle. I'm surprised this worked when you were an MBean? Maybe just luck :-) The obvious solution would be to inject the ORBService as a parameter into your create() method. It then must be started/installed to be passed as such a parameter. | <bean ...> | <create> | <parameter><inject bean="ORBService"/></parametrer> | </create> | But if you don't want to change your code then you can use the "demand" instead of "depends' to achieve what you want: Example from the schema: http://viewvc.jboss.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/jbossas/projects/microcontaine... | The demand is used to specify a dependency on a supply | | and when the demand should be supplied | | | | e.g.: | | ISupply must be installed before IDemand is constructed | | | | <bean name="IDemand"> | | <demand state="Instantiated">theSupply</demand> | | </bean> | | <bean name="ISupply" ...> | | <supply>theSupply</supply> | | </bean> | In your case you would | <demand state="Create">ORBService</demand> | View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4152367#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...