Discussion:
SBS2k Exchange recovery - HELP!
(too old to reply)
Phil Partridge
2006-11-03 21:16:14 UTC
Permalink
All,

SBS2k, Exchange has hit the end-stops bigtime.
Ran offline defrag, and got system back up.. Client didn't have enough
time to offload anything before ISP did a 'Mail DB failover'. - This
resulted in the same emails coming in twice!
Exchange lasted 16 hours between the end of defrag to keeling over
again.
This time, there was also an event log entry saying that the disk with
Mdbdata on it had got to below 10MB free. - This not true.

Partitions set to run chkdsk, and server rebooted.

I presume there isn't a hack to increase the database size, as there is
in Exchange2003?

Is there a way to extract a mailbox from Exchange, when exchange won't
run?

If I did this, could I then uses eseutil to compact what was left, then
clear out a sizeable chunk, then get the extracted mailbox back in?

TIA,
Philip Partridge
Phil Partridge
2006-11-03 22:04:40 UTC
Permalink
Post by Phil Partridge
All,
SBS2k, Exchange has hit the end-stops bigtime.
Ran offline defrag, and got system back up.. Client didn't have enough
time to offload anything before ISP did a 'Mail DB failover'. - This
resulted in the same emails coming in twice!
Exchange lasted 16 hours between the end of defrag to keeling over
again.
This time, there was also an event log entry saying that the disk with
Mdbdata on it had got to below 10MB free. - This not true.
Partitions set to run chkdsk, and server rebooted.
I presume there isn't a hack to increase the database size, as there is
in Exchange2003?
Is there a way to extract a mailbox from Exchange, when exchange won't
run?
If I did this, could I then uses eseutil to compact what was left, then
clear out a sizeable chunk, then get the extracted mailbox back in?
TIA,
Philip Partridge
Oh, and to make it *really* interesting..

I do not have physical access to the server over the weekend, but can
get in remotely.
AND, the MD needs his foreign trip reservation details by 10:00 Monday
morning!

Philip Partridge
Anna Clark
2006-11-03 23:01:08 UTC
Permalink
Hi Phil:

See if this helps.

You will need to be on SP3, and you should unplug from the net.

How to temporarily increase the Exchange 2000 16-gigabyte database ... A new update to Exchange 2000 Server Standard Edition has been developed. This update lets you temporarily increase the database size limit by 1 GB. ...
support.microsoft.com/kb/813051


Regards:

Anna Clark
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Phil Partridge
All,
SBS2k, Exchange has hit the end-stops bigtime.
Ran offline defrag, and got system back up.. Client didn't have enough
time to offload anything before ISP did a 'Mail DB failover'. - This
resulted in the same emails coming in twice!
Exchange lasted 16 hours between the end of defrag to keeling over
again.
This time, there was also an event log entry saying that the disk with
Mdbdata on it had got to below 10MB free. - This not true.
Partitions set to run chkdsk, and server rebooted.
I presume there isn't a hack to increase the database size, as there is
in Exchange2003?
Is there a way to extract a mailbox from Exchange, when exchange won't
run?
If I did this, could I then uses eseutil to compact what was left, then
clear out a sizeable chunk, then get the extracted mailbox back in?
TIA,
Philip Partridge
Oh, and to make it *really* interesting..
I do not have physical access to the server over the weekend, but can
get in remotely.
AND, the MD needs his foreign trip reservation details by 10:00 Monday
morning!
Philip Partridge
Phil Partridge
2006-11-04 00:06:42 UTC
Permalink
Post by Anna Clark
See if this helps.
You will need to be on SP3, and you should unplug from the net.
How to temporarily increase the Exchange 2000 16-gigabyte database ... A new
update to Exchange 2000 Server Standard Edition has been developed. This update
lets you temporarily increase the database size limit by 1 GB. ...
support.microsoft.com/kb/813051
Anna Clark
Brilliant!

Am clearing space to run eseutil... (slow) :-(
Will read up, and increase space, then run eseutil. - Have already
disabled collecting of email.

Will see how this goes.

If not, I will be back to get help with exmerge.

Thanks for the info.
Regards,
Phil.
Post by Anna Clark
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Phil Partridge
All,
SBS2k, Exchange has hit the end-stops bigtime.
Ran offline defrag, and got system back up.. Client didn't have enough
time to offload anything before ISP did a 'Mail DB failover'. - This
resulted in the same emails coming in twice!
Exchange lasted 16 hours between the end of defrag to keeling over
again.
This time, there was also an event log entry saying that the disk with
Mdbdata on it had got to below 10MB free. - This not true.
Partitions set to run chkdsk, and server rebooted.
I presume there isn't a hack to increase the database size, as there is
in Exchange2003?
Is there a way to extract a mailbox from Exchange, when exchange won't
run?
If I did this, could I then uses eseutil to compact what was left, then
clear out a sizeable chunk, then get the extracted mailbox back in?
TIA,
Philip Partridge
Oh, and to make it *really* interesting..
I do not have physical access to the server over the weekend, but can
get in remotely.
AND, the MD needs his foreign trip reservation details by 10:00 Monday
morning!
Philip Partridge
Philip Partridge
Cris Hanna[SBS-MVP]
2006-11-04 00:27:23 UTC
Permalink
Guess he'll be doing the upgrade to SBS 2k3 soon?
--
CRIS HANNA [SBS-MVP]
----------------------------------------
Please only communicate in the newsgroup. Please do not contact me
directly.
----------------------------------------
Sent via Windows Mail on Windows Vista, Business Edition RC 2
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Anna Clark
See if this helps.
You will need to be on SP3, and you should unplug from the net.
How to temporarily increase the Exchange 2000 16-gigabyte database ... A new
update to Exchange 2000 Server Standard Edition has been developed. This update
lets you temporarily increase the database size limit by 1 GB. ...
support.microsoft.com/kb/813051
Anna Clark
Brilliant!
Am clearing space to run eseutil... (slow) :-(
Will read up, and increase space, then run eseutil. - Have already
disabled collecting of email.
Will see how this goes.
If not, I will be back to get help with exmerge.
Thanks for the info.
Regards,
Phil.
Post by Anna Clark
news:S$PdFBA4z7SFFw
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Phil Partridge
All,
SBS2k, Exchange has hit the end-stops bigtime.
Ran offline defrag, and got system back up.. Client didn't have enough
time to offload anything before ISP did a 'Mail DB failover'. - This
resulted in the same emails coming in twice!
Exchange lasted 16 hours between the end of defrag to keeling over
again.
This time, there was also an event log entry saying that the disk with
Mdbdata on it had got to below 10MB free. - This not true.
Partitions set to run chkdsk, and server rebooted.
I presume there isn't a hack to increase the database size, as there is
in Exchange2003?
Is there a way to extract a mailbox from Exchange, when exchange won't
run?
If I did this, could I then uses eseutil to compact what was left, then
clear out a sizeable chunk, then get the extracted mailbox back in?
TIA,
Philip Partridge
Oh, and to make it *really* interesting..
I do not have physical access to the server over the weekend, but can
get in remotely.
AND, the MD needs his foreign trip reservation details by 10:00 Monday
morning!
Philip Partridge
Philip Partridge
Phil Partridge
2006-11-04 19:05:15 UTC
Permalink
Post by Cris Hanna[SBS-MVP]
Guess he'll be doing the upgrade to SBS 2k3 soon?
If only I could persuade the Client! ;-)

I suppose this *might* tip things my way a little.

Still clearing enough space to run eseutil..
Then need to find 'what' level of SP Exchange is running..
Then download/apply sp/hotfix to increase by 1GB..
Then (gently) run Exchange, and clear out some cr*p!

Then eseutil, and reset to 16GB I guess. - Just in case it happens
again.

Thanks all..
Will report back.........
Philip Partridge
Phil Partridge
2006-11-05 10:56:25 UTC
Permalink
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Anna Clark
See if this helps.
You will need to be on SP3, and you should unplug from the net.
How to temporarily increase the Exchange 2000 16-gigabyte database ... A new
update to Exchange 2000 Server Standard Edition has been developed. This update
lets you temporarily increase the database size limit by 1 GB. ...
support.microsoft.com/kb/813051
Anna Clark
Brilliant!
Am clearing space to run eseutil... (slow) :-(
Will read up, and increase space, then run eseutil. - Have already
disabled collecting of email.
Will see how this goes.
If not, I will be back to get help with exmerge.
Thanks for the info.
Regards,
Phil.
All,

A little more help please!

Post sp3 update do-da worked a treat..
Eseutil crunched it a bit..
MTA and SMTP are manual and stopped..
I can open OE (on server) and clear 'rubbish'..

I have tried to use OWA to access other mailboxes from IE on the Server.
I get 403 forbidden messages from ISA (I presume)..
Is there a fast (dirty?) way to enable OWA? - I can then go into some of
the mailboxes and start to clear them before the Staff get in Monday.

I am searching for the answer myself, but haven't got there yet!

TIA,
Philip Partridge
Anna Clark
2006-11-05 11:45:55 UTC
Permalink
Hi Phil:

Glad to see you are making some progress. In thinking about your present
situation I think I would worry about OWA after getting the mail system in
hand. If you need to ask permission, perhaps you could get it under control
and then ask forgiveness.

:-).

So I think I would hit this problem as follows:

From the servers console, using exchange manager, view the store to see if
there are any users who have unusually large amounts of items in their mail
boxes. Starting with the most likely suspects, go either to that users
workstation, (or to any workstation, create a profile for that user and move
chunks of messages to the local .pest file). Better to do it from the
users normal workstation, as then you would have that users "junk" in his
local system. I would probably sort by subject and try to take out the
duplicates, but you are closer to the problem and can see the details better
than I.

If you don't know all the passwords, you aren't going to have access from
OWE either, so I would, and have, changed all the passwords to something
simple, 123456, for a project like this, and then ticked the box that
required them to change them back on their next logon, presumably Monday AM.

Anna
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Anna Clark
See if this helps.
You will need to be on SP3, and you should unplug from the net.
How to temporarily increase the Exchange 2000 16-gigabyte database ... A new
update to Exchange 2000 Server Standard Edition has been developed. This update
lets you temporarily increase the database size limit by 1 GB. ...
support.microsoft.com/kb/813051
Anna Clark
Brilliant!
Am clearing space to run eseutil... (slow) :-(
Will read up, and increase space, then run eseutil. - Have already
disabled collecting of email.
Will see how this goes.
If not, I will be back to get help with exmerge.
Thanks for the info.
Regards,
Phil.
All,
A little more help please!
Post sp3 update do-da worked a treat..
Eseutil crunched it a bit..
MTA and SMTP are manual and stopped..
I can open OE (on server) and clear 'rubbish'..
I have tried to use OWA to access other mailboxes from IE on the Server.
I get 403 forbidden messages from ISA (I presume)..
Is there a fast (dirty?) way to enable OWA? - I can then go into some of
the mailboxes and start to clear them before the Staff get in Monday.
I am searching for the answer myself, but haven't got there yet!
TIA,
Philip Partridge
Phil Partridge
2006-11-05 18:01:54 UTC
Permalink
Post by Anna Clark
Glad to see you are making some progress. In thinking about your present
situation I think I would worry about OWA after getting the mail system in
hand. If you need to ask permission, perhaps you could get it under control
and then ask forgiveness.
:-).
I only have remote access until Monday.. So far, all has been done
remotely with everything crossed!
Post by Anna Clark
From the servers console, using exchange manager, view the store to see if
there are any users who have unusually large amounts of items in their mail
boxes. Starting with the most likely suspects, go either to that users
workstation, (or to any workstation, create a profile for that user and move
chunks of messages to the local .pest file). Better to do it from the
users normal workstation, as then you would have that users "junk" in his
local system. I would probably sort by subject and try to take out the
duplicates, but you are closer to the problem and can see the details better
than I.
If you don't know all the passwords, you aren't going to have access from
OWE either, so I would, and have, changed all the passwords to something
simple, 123456, for a project like this, and then ticked the box that
required them to change them back on their next logon, presumably Monday AM.
Anna
I will be on the doorstep first-thing Monday, but hoped to be able to
remotely attack one or two of the worst mailboxes. - Worst user reports
3.6GB in size. She keeps a load of emails with marketing proofs as
attachments in Outlook! There is also a 'monitor' account which gets a
'copy' of everything. I know it is a single instance DB, so it shouldn't
make a difference, but monitor is pretty big as well.

If I could have got OWA working from the RDP into the Server (so only
local net, not Internet) I could have had a go at clearing some of the
rubbish.
Most I have found on the Net about OWA is way above my head, so it will
have to be cleared Monday via 'sneaker-net'.

Thanks again for the pointer to the KB to increase the mailstore limit.

One final question;
I presume changing the Registry entry to '0' will disable the extra
storage? - Then it is there if I need to do this again.

Many thanks again,
Phil Partridge.
Post by Anna Clark
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Anna Clark
See if this helps.
You will need to be on SP3, and you should unplug from the net.
How to temporarily increase the Exchange 2000 16-gigabyte database ... A new
update to Exchange 2000 Server Standard Edition has been developed. This update
lets you temporarily increase the database size limit by 1 GB. ...
support.microsoft.com/kb/813051
Anna Clark
Brilliant!
Am clearing space to run eseutil... (slow) :-(
Will read up, and increase space, then run eseutil. - Have already
disabled collecting of email.
Will see how this goes.
If not, I will be back to get help with exmerge.
Thanks for the info.
Regards,
Phil.
All,
A little more help please!
Post sp3 update do-da worked a treat..
Eseutil crunched it a bit..
MTA and SMTP are manual and stopped..
I can open OE (on server) and clear 'rubbish'..
I have tried to use OWA to access other mailboxes from IE on the Server.
I get 403 forbidden messages from ISA (I presume)..
Is there a fast (dirty?) way to enable OWA? - I can then go into some of
the mailboxes and start to clear them before the Staff get in Monday.
I am searching for the answer myself, but haven't got there yet!
TIA,
Philip Partridge
Philip Partridge
Steve
2006-11-06 03:24:44 UTC
Permalink
Phil-

As Cris suggested earlier I think you really need to convince this client
that they must move to SBS 2003 with Exchange 2003 SP2 so you can
permanently increase the database size.
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Anna Clark
Glad to see you are making some progress. In thinking about your present
situation I think I would worry about OWA after getting the mail system in
hand. If you need to ask permission, perhaps you could get it under control
and then ask forgiveness.
:-).
I only have remote access until Monday.. So far, all has been done
remotely with everything crossed!
Post by Anna Clark
From the servers console, using exchange manager, view the store to see if
there are any users who have unusually large amounts of items in their mail
boxes. Starting with the most likely suspects, go either to that users
workstation, (or to any workstation, create a profile for that user and move
chunks of messages to the local .pest file). Better to do it from the
users normal workstation, as then you would have that users "junk" in his
local system. I would probably sort by subject and try to take out the
duplicates, but you are closer to the problem and can see the details better
than I.
If you don't know all the passwords, you aren't going to have access from
OWE either, so I would, and have, changed all the passwords to something
simple, 123456, for a project like this, and then ticked the box that
required them to change them back on their next logon, presumably Monday AM.
Anna
I will be on the doorstep first-thing Monday, but hoped to be able to
remotely attack one or two of the worst mailboxes. - Worst user reports
3.6GB in size. She keeps a load of emails with marketing proofs as
attachments in Outlook! There is also a 'monitor' account which gets a
'copy' of everything. I know it is a single instance DB, so it shouldn't
make a difference, but monitor is pretty big as well.
If I could have got OWA working from the RDP into the Server (so only
local net, not Internet) I could have had a go at clearing some of the
rubbish.
Most I have found on the Net about OWA is way above my head, so it will
have to be cleared Monday via 'sneaker-net'.
Thanks again for the pointer to the KB to increase the mailstore limit.
One final question;
I presume changing the Registry entry to '0' will disable the extra
storage? - Then it is there if I need to do this again.
Many thanks again,
Phil Partridge.
Post by Anna Clark
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Anna Clark
See if this helps.
You will need to be on SP3, and you should unplug from the net.
How to temporarily increase the Exchange 2000 16-gigabyte database ...
A
new
update to Exchange 2000 Server Standard Edition has been developed.
This
update
lets you temporarily increase the database size limit by 1 GB. ...
support.microsoft.com/kb/813051
Anna Clark
Brilliant!
Am clearing space to run eseutil... (slow) :-(
Will read up, and increase space, then run eseutil. - Have already
disabled collecting of email.
Will see how this goes.
If not, I will be back to get help with exmerge.
Thanks for the info.
Regards,
Phil.
All,
A little more help please!
Post sp3 update do-da worked a treat..
Eseutil crunched it a bit..
MTA and SMTP are manual and stopped..
I can open OE (on server) and clear 'rubbish'..
I have tried to use OWA to access other mailboxes from IE on the Server.
I get 403 forbidden messages from ISA (I presume)..
Is there a fast (dirty?) way to enable OWA? - I can then go into some of
the mailboxes and start to clear them before the Staff get in Monday.
I am searching for the answer myself, but haven't got there yet!
TIA,
Philip Partridge
Philip Partridge
Phil Partridge
2006-11-06 21:29:41 UTC
Permalink
Post by Steve
Phil-
As Cris suggested earlier I think you really need to convince this client
that they must move to SBS 2003 with Exchange 2003 SP2 so you can
permanently increase the database size.
I here what you are saying.. AND I think the Client IS getting the
message!

I was in there all day today.. Teaching how to save email to a folder..
Either as just a 'txt' or an 'eml' to retain the attachment(s).

Does anyone in the Group have experience of GFI MailArchiver?
This looks good, as it pulls mail out into a SQL database.

Further woe today.. 16:50 Users started complaining of very slow
response, and some Outlook timeouts..
The guy who monitors the 'monitor' mailbox (a feature of Exclaimer I
think - allows a 'copy' of every email in/out to be seen) had been
clearing 18,000 emails from it, and had many (500-ish) with a
?circle/red arrow? icon at the beginning. - These could not be deleted.
Some 'in use / owned by system' message I think.
Accounts had just performed a month end (Sage Line100, basically v7 with
windows-ish front end, and C:\ free space nose-dived.

Every thing s l o w e d d o w n t o a c r a w l . . . . . .

When c:\ got to 2.26MB free, I couldn't even open Event Viewer! ;-}

I discovered something else I didn't know about Exchange.. Mdbdata on
another partition, but the server engine in program files.. C:\
partition only 4GB, so not big enough anyway, and Exchange queues on
C:\..
Badmail had best part of 500MB in it.. - Is it really permissable to
just delete the contents of badmail??

Can I delete a few day old 'ifs' files from the mdbdata folder?

How can I discover how the raid array is working? - Disk manager just
sees a big disk partitioned into two, yet there are three physical
disks.

Cheers all,
Phil (Exchange isn't so scary, just complicated) Partridge.
Mind you, if it *really* breaks.. AARRGGH!
Post by Steve
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Anna Clark
Glad to see you are making some progress. In thinking about your present
situation I think I would worry about OWA after getting the mail system in
hand. If you need to ask permission, perhaps you could get it under control
and then ask forgiveness.
:-).
I only have remote access until Monday.. So far, all has been done
remotely with everything crossed!
Post by Anna Clark
From the servers console, using exchange manager, view the store to see if
there are any users who have unusually large amounts of items in their mail
boxes. Starting with the most likely suspects, go either to that users
workstation, (or to any workstation, create a profile for that user and move
chunks of messages to the local .pest file). Better to do it from the
users normal workstation, as then you would have that users "junk" in his
local system. I would probably sort by subject and try to take out the
duplicates, but you are closer to the problem and can see the details better
than I.
If you don't know all the passwords, you aren't going to have access from
OWE either, so I would, and have, changed all the passwords to something
simple, 123456, for a project like this, and then ticked the box that
required them to change them back on their next logon, presumably Monday AM.
Anna
I will be on the doorstep first-thing Monday, but hoped to be able to
remotely attack one or two of the worst mailboxes. - Worst user reports
3.6GB in size. She keeps a load of emails with marketing proofs as
attachments in Outlook! There is also a 'monitor' account which gets a
'copy' of everything. I know it is a single instance DB, so it shouldn't
make a difference, but monitor is pretty big as well.
If I could have got OWA working from the RDP into the Server (so only
local net, not Internet) I could have had a go at clearing some of the
rubbish.
Most I have found on the Net about OWA is way above my head, so it will
have to be cleared Monday via 'sneaker-net'.
Thanks again for the pointer to the KB to increase the mailstore limit.
One final question;
I presume changing the Registry entry to '0' will disable the extra
storage? - Then it is there if I need to do this again.
Many thanks again,
Phil Partridge.
Post by Anna Clark
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Anna Clark
See if this helps.
You will need to be on SP3, and you should unplug from the net.
How to temporarily increase the Exchange 2000 16-gigabyte database ...
A
new
update to Exchange 2000 Server Standard Edition has been developed.
This
update
lets you temporarily increase the database size limit by 1 GB. ...
support.microsoft.com/kb/813051
Anna Clark
Brilliant!
Am clearing space to run eseutil... (slow) :-(
Will read up, and increase space, then run eseutil. - Have already
disabled collecting of email.
Will see how this goes.
If not, I will be back to get help with exmerge.
Thanks for the info.
Regards,
Phil.
All,
A little more help please!
Post sp3 update do-da worked a treat..
Eseutil crunched it a bit..
MTA and SMTP are manual and stopped..
I can open OE (on server) and clear 'rubbish'..
I have tried to use OWA to access other mailboxes from IE on the Server.
I get 403 forbidden messages from ISA (I presume)..
Is there a fast (dirty?) way to enable OWA? - I can then go into some of
the mailboxes and start to clear them before the Staff get in Monday.
I am searching for the answer myself, but haven't got there yet!
TIA,
Philip Partridge
Philip Partridge
Philip Partridge
Steve
2006-11-06 22:16:04 UTC
Permalink
I'll just answer about the badmail folder. Yes you can delete everything
there.
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Steve
Phil-
As Cris suggested earlier I think you really need to convince this client
that they must move to SBS 2003 with Exchange 2003 SP2 so you can
permanently increase the database size.
I here what you are saying.. AND I think the Client IS getting the
message!
I was in there all day today.. Teaching how to save email to a folder..
Either as just a 'txt' or an 'eml' to retain the attachment(s).
Does anyone in the Group have experience of GFI MailArchiver?
This looks good, as it pulls mail out into a SQL database.
Further woe today.. 16:50 Users started complaining of very slow
response, and some Outlook timeouts..
The guy who monitors the 'monitor' mailbox (a feature of Exclaimer I
think - allows a 'copy' of every email in/out to be seen) had been
clearing 18,000 emails from it, and had many (500-ish) with a
?circle/red arrow? icon at the beginning. - These could not be deleted.
Some 'in use / owned by system' message I think.
Accounts had just performed a month end (Sage Line100, basically v7 with
windows-ish front end, and C:\ free space nose-dived.
Every thing s l o w e d d o w n t o a c r a w l . . . . . .
When c:\ got to 2.26MB free, I couldn't even open Event Viewer! ;-}
I discovered something else I didn't know about Exchange.. Mdbdata on
another partition, but the server engine in program files.. C:\
partition only 4GB, so not big enough anyway, and Exchange queues on
C:\..
Badmail had best part of 500MB in it.. - Is it really permissable to
just delete the contents of badmail??
Can I delete a few day old 'ifs' files from the mdbdata folder?
How can I discover how the raid array is working? - Disk manager just
sees a big disk partitioned into two, yet there are three physical
disks.
Cheers all,
Phil (Exchange isn't so scary, just complicated) Partridge.
Mind you, if it *really* breaks.. AARRGGH!
Post by Steve
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Anna Clark
Glad to see you are making some progress. In thinking about your present
situation I think I would worry about OWA after getting the mail system in
hand. If you need to ask permission, perhaps you could get it under control
and then ask forgiveness.
:-).
I only have remote access until Monday.. So far, all has been done
remotely with everything crossed!
Post by Anna Clark
From the servers console, using exchange manager, view the store to see if
there are any users who have unusually large amounts of items in their mail
boxes. Starting with the most likely suspects, go either to that users
workstation, (or to any workstation, create a profile for that user and move
chunks of messages to the local .pest file). Better to do it from the
users normal workstation, as then you would have that users "junk" in his
local system. I would probably sort by subject and try to take out the
duplicates, but you are closer to the problem and can see the details better
than I.
If you don't know all the passwords, you aren't going to have access from
OWE either, so I would, and have, changed all the passwords to something
simple, 123456, for a project like this, and then ticked the box that
required them to change them back on their next logon, presumably Monday AM.
Anna
I will be on the doorstep first-thing Monday, but hoped to be able to
remotely attack one or two of the worst mailboxes. - Worst user reports
3.6GB in size. She keeps a load of emails with marketing proofs as
attachments in Outlook! There is also a 'monitor' account which gets a
'copy' of everything. I know it is a single instance DB, so it shouldn't
make a difference, but monitor is pretty big as well.
If I could have got OWA working from the RDP into the Server (so only
local net, not Internet) I could have had a go at clearing some of the
rubbish.
Most I have found on the Net about OWA is way above my head, so it will
have to be cleared Monday via 'sneaker-net'.
Thanks again for the pointer to the KB to increase the mailstore limit.
One final question;
I presume changing the Registry entry to '0' will disable the extra
storage? - Then it is there if I need to do this again.
Many thanks again,
Phil Partridge.
Post by Anna Clark
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Anna Clark
See if this helps.
You will need to be on SP3, and you should unplug from the net.
How to temporarily increase the Exchange 2000 16-gigabyte database ...
A
new
update to Exchange 2000 Server Standard Edition has been developed.
This
update
lets you temporarily increase the database size limit by 1 GB. ...
support.microsoft.com/kb/813051
Anna Clark
Brilliant!
Am clearing space to run eseutil... (slow) :-(
Will read up, and increase space, then run eseutil. - Have already
disabled collecting of email.
Will see how this goes.
If not, I will be back to get help with exmerge.
Thanks for the info.
Regards,
Phil.
All,
A little more help please!
Post sp3 update do-da worked a treat..
Eseutil crunched it a bit..
MTA and SMTP are manual and stopped..
I can open OE (on server) and clear 'rubbish'..
I have tried to use OWA to access other mailboxes from IE on the Server.
I get 403 forbidden messages from ISA (I presume)..
Is there a fast (dirty?) way to enable OWA? - I can then go into some of
the mailboxes and start to clear them before the Staff get in Monday.
I am searching for the answer myself, but haven't got there yet!
TIA,
Philip Partridge
Philip Partridge
Philip Partridge
Phil Partridge
2006-11-07 10:24:29 UTC
Permalink
Post by Steve
I'll just answer about the badmail folder. Yes you can delete everything
there.
Thanks Steve! Something else to keep an eye on.

Any comments on the other points from others in the Group?

Suggestions for another archiving option perhaps?

Thanks all!
Phil.
Post by Steve
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Steve
Phil-
As Cris suggested earlier I think you really need to convince this client
that they must move to SBS 2003 with Exchange 2003 SP2 so you can
permanently increase the database size.
I here what you are saying.. AND I think the Client IS getting the
message!
I was in there all day today.. Teaching how to save email to a folder..
Either as just a 'txt' or an 'eml' to retain the attachment(s).
Does anyone in the Group have experience of GFI MailArchiver?
This looks good, as it pulls mail out into a SQL database.
Further woe today.. 16:50 Users started complaining of very slow
response, and some Outlook timeouts..
The guy who monitors the 'monitor' mailbox (a feature of Exclaimer I
think - allows a 'copy' of every email in/out to be seen) had been
clearing 18,000 emails from it, and had many (500-ish) with a
?circle/red arrow? icon at the beginning. - These could not be deleted.
Some 'in use / owned by system' message I think.
Accounts had just performed a month end (Sage Line100, basically v7 with
windows-ish front end, and C:\ free space nose-dived.
Every thing s l o w e d d o w n t o a c r a w l . . . . . .
When c:\ got to 2.26MB free, I couldn't even open Event Viewer! ;-}
I discovered something else I didn't know about Exchange.. Mdbdata on
another partition, but the server engine in program files.. C:\
partition only 4GB, so not big enough anyway, and Exchange queues on
C:\..
Badmail had best part of 500MB in it.. - Is it really permissable to
just delete the contents of badmail??
Can I delete a few day old 'ifs' files from the mdbdata folder?
How can I discover how the raid array is working? - Disk manager just
sees a big disk partitioned into two, yet there are three physical
disks.
Cheers all,
Phil (Exchange isn't so scary, just complicated) Partridge.
Mind you, if it *really* breaks.. AARRGGH!
Post by Steve
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Anna Clark
Glad to see you are making some progress. In thinking about your present
situation I think I would worry about OWA after getting the mail system in
hand. If you need to ask permission, perhaps you could get it under control
and then ask forgiveness.
:-).
I only have remote access until Monday.. So far, all has been done
remotely with everything crossed!
Post by Anna Clark
From the servers console, using exchange manager, view the store to see if
there are any users who have unusually large amounts of items in their mail
boxes. Starting with the most likely suspects, go either to that users
workstation, (or to any workstation, create a profile for that user and move
chunks of messages to the local .pest file). Better to do it from the
users normal workstation, as then you would have that users "junk" in his
local system. I would probably sort by subject and try to take out the
duplicates, but you are closer to the problem and can see the details better
than I.
If you don't know all the passwords, you aren't going to have access from
OWE either, so I would, and have, changed all the passwords to something
simple, 123456, for a project like this, and then ticked the box that
required them to change them back on their next logon, presumably Monday AM.
Anna
I will be on the doorstep first-thing Monday, but hoped to be able to
remotely attack one or two of the worst mailboxes. - Worst user reports
3.6GB in size. She keeps a load of emails with marketing proofs as
attachments in Outlook! There is also a 'monitor' account which gets a
'copy' of everything. I know it is a single instance DB, so it shouldn't
make a difference, but monitor is pretty big as well.
If I could have got OWA working from the RDP into the Server (so only
local net, not Internet) I could have had a go at clearing some of the
rubbish.
Most I have found on the Net about OWA is way above my head, so it will
have to be cleared Monday via 'sneaker-net'.
Thanks again for the pointer to the KB to increase the mailstore limit.
One final question;
I presume changing the Registry entry to '0' will disable the extra
storage? - Then it is there if I need to do this again.
Many thanks again,
Phil Partridge.
Post by Anna Clark
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Phil Partridge
Post by Anna Clark
See if this helps.
You will need to be on SP3, and you should unplug from the net.
How to temporarily increase the Exchange 2000 16-gigabyte database ...
A
new
update to Exchange 2000 Server Standard Edition has been developed.
This
update
lets you temporarily increase the database size limit by 1 GB. ...
support.microsoft.com/kb/813051
Anna Clark
Brilliant!
Am clearing space to run eseutil... (slow) :-(
Will read up, and increase space, then run eseutil. - Have already
disabled collecting of email.
Will see how this goes.
If not, I will be back to get help with exmerge.
Thanks for the info.
Regards,
Phil.
All,
A little more help please!
Post sp3 update do-da worked a treat..
Eseutil crunched it a bit..
MTA and SMTP are manual and stopped..
I can open OE (on server) and clear 'rubbish'..
I have tried to use OWA to access other mailboxes from IE on the Server.
I get 403 forbidden messages from ISA (I presume)..
Is there a fast (dirty?) way to enable OWA? - I can then go into some of
the mailboxes and start to clear them before the Staff get in Monday.
I am searching for the answer myself, but haven't got there yet!
TIA,
Philip Partridge
Philip Partridge
Philip Partridge
Philip Partridge
b***@gmail.com
2012-07-06 09:33:32 UTC
Permalink
Lepide Exchange Manager or LEM is the unique software blended with advance features to perform group of operations in Exchange Server. It efficiently restores elements from available backup, perform EDB recovery and fulfill email regulatory requirements.
For more information - http://www.exchangedatabaserecovery.co.uk

Loading...