Information Stores won't mount

[Erik Rossou]

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

[seth]

well, i'd say you got nothing to lose since you say the store hasn't been
used and has no mail in it
the first thing i'd do is remove the mail properties from each user; that
way AD won't have any info about mailboxes for any user
not sure if you will have any problems with the store dismounted.
theoretically you wouldn't since if the store would to come back up, it
would just report in esm that the mailbox just isn't associated with a user
account.
if you get past that, then just go in esm and delete the store and create a
new one. it will automatically create the edb and stm files for you, then
you can go in to ad for each user and recreate the mailboxes and aliases

[Erik Rossou]

Seth,

Thanks for the help.

I deleted the edb and stm file. Then tried to mount the Mailbox Store. Like
you said it reported the missing files, and created new ones. I never new it
would be this easy.

Erik

[Martin Chisholm [MSFT]]

Erik, I'm glad your problem is solved.

But to beat the proverbial dead horse:

The error you got was likely:

JET_errInvalidCreateDbVersion
# /* recovery tried to replay a database creation, but the
# database was originally created with an incompatible
# (likely older) version of the database engine */

We fixed this after 2003 SP1. I don't know if it made it to a
QFE/hotfix, or if it will just be in 2003 SP2.


Now for a Very Brief History of JET:

The JET that Exchange uses is 'JET Blue'.
The JET that people usually talk about is 'JET Red'.

JET Red is the one that the other applications would be using. It's
the one that would have the SP8.

JET Blue is now called ESE. It lives in ese.dll and eseutil.exe goes
along with it.

The two JETs had a bit in common many years ago, but now they're so
different the name is probably the biggest thing they have in common.

They each have their strengths and weaknesses, but I'd say that ESE
(JET Blue) is much better. I'm also biased because I work on
it. :)



-martin

Boring-but-necessary-disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with
no warranties, and confers no rights.

[Erik Rossou]

Martin,

You guessed right. That was exactly the error message I got. Interesting to
read your lines on JET. I never new the difference between JET Red and JET
Blue. I knew that Windows uses JET for other things (like the DHCP
database), but not that Exchange also uses it.

And yes, I am extremely happy that my Exchange is running again. I always
used SBS2003 and Exchange was one of the things I tried no to touch because
of it's assumed complexity. I now switched to Windows Server 2003 + Exchange
2003 in a non SBS2003 environment and find that Exchange is much more
admin-friendly once you get the hang of it.

Erik