Exchange Server

Erik Rossou · Guest

A cry for help from an Exchange novice.

I admit, I made some terrible mistakes. But hopefuly with your help I will
be able to recover. Here is my story

I got single new hardware-platform to replace 2 aging servers (one for
Exchange and one for IIS). I decided to use this new hardware platform for
running both Microsoft Exchange 2003 and about 20 websites using IIS6. I
made my life easy by deciding that we would not migrate anything from the
old Exchange server to the new one (no data and no settings).

I first installed Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Exchange 2003 + SP1.
Then I manually re-created the 5 user accounts in Active Directory with in
total about 50 e-mail aliases. I then moved on installing additional
software tools without checking my Exchange installation. Big mistake as was
proven afterwards, because now I don't know whether the Exchange installtion
was fully functional at that time.

I then installed about 20 websites of which 3 have a web-application that
also uses the Jet-engine to access the application's repository.

At that point I moved the Exchange databases to a new directory (again
without checking if the move went well). Don't ask me why I didn't check
that (I feel stupid enough as it is!). I guess I was over-confident all went
well.

On top of that I had a power failure on the Dell PowerEdge.

Now my problem:

1. Exchange won't mount the Mailbox Stores suggesting that I restart the
Exchange IS service which I did, but that did not solve the problem

2. The Microsoft Knowledge Base tells me to use Eseutil. Eseutil tells me
that the database is in a 'Dirty Shutdown' mode. It suggests that I use
Eseutil to repair the priv1.edb file. I tried but Eseutil then complains
that it can't do the repair because 'the database was created using an
incompatible (likely older) version of the Jet database engine'. I have got
no clue how the Jet engine version got changed somewhere in between.

3. I then downloaded and ran SP8 for the Jet engine hoping to solve the
problem, but no luck.

4. I then re-installed Exchange 2003 and also reinstalled SP1, no luck again

Now my proposed solution:
The Exchange database holds no e-mail, because it has never been used so
far. I assume all account details (user accounts and e-mail aliases are
stored in AD).

Won't the easiest solution be to just discard the damaged Exchange edb-files
and stm-files (both for the Mailbox Store and the Public Folder Store) and
somehow re-create these from scratch?

Any suggestions on my proposed solution? And ofcourse a suggestion on how to
re-create the edb-files and stm-files?

Thanks,

Erik

p.s. This has been a great learning experience

Paul Bowden [MSFT] · Guest

Hi Erik,

We could go through the lengthy exercise of figuring out what happened here,
but if you're okay with starting from blank databases, all you need to do is
rename the EDB and STM files. Then go back into ESM and attempt to mount the
databases. Exchange will not be able to find the original files and will
create new ones for you. Once you have verified that all is well, you can
archive (or delete) those files that you renamed.

You're correct that user account details and e-mail addresses are stored in
the AD.

--
Paul Bowden
Program Manager
Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/exbpa

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"Erik Rossou" <erik@xxxrossou.nl> wrote in message
news:uBNiMn38EHA.3376@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...

Erik Rossou · Guest

Paul,

Thanks for the help.

I deleted the edb and stm file. Then tried to mount the Mailbox Store. It
reported the missing files, and created new ones. I never new Exchange could
be this easy.

Erik

"Paul Bowden [MSFT]" <pbowden@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:O8c9gL88EHA.1408@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...

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