Re: best way to recreate a mailbox

If you're working with PSS, I'd stick with their recommendations, especially
if they've escalated your issue. The other thing is, there have been some
changes in PSS recently, so please take advantage of any request to provide
feedback about the quality of service (or request the e-mail address for the
rep's boss if he doesn't offer it).

A couple of comments: I wouldn't run eseutil or isinteg in the absence of
something pointing you to that, unless PSS asks you to. However rarely,
data loss can occur from running utilities against your Exchange databases.
Plus, this doesn't seem like a database corruption issue - those generally
log pretty good clues. I wonder if the defrag helping is coincidental -
could stopping and restarting all the Exchange services produce the same
result?

I'd shut off diskkeeper for a couple of days in case that's involved - I
don't have any reason to doubt diskkeeper in particular, but 3rd party
programs on the exchange server are always suspect. On a related topic, I'd
take a close look at your AV, particularly making sure all the appropriate
files and processes are excluded. You could also check with your AV company
for known issues, and disable background AV scanning of Exchange to see if
that helps. (CA advised me to start background scanning after a long time
where they recommended against it, but I see that the Best Practices
Analyzer tool still points to performance issues caused by it).

The Exchange Best Practices Analyzer will tell you if any of your AV
settings are wrong, plus possibly some other useful info. You could run
that, and I don't know any reason why it would interfere with anything
you're doing with PSS.

Are you running Exchange 2003 SP1? If not, I'd install it after checking
with the PSS rep.

When the information store fails to stop, does it log an error?

Lastly, are you running Outlook 2003 in cached mode? If so, I'd disable
cached mode at least temporarily. I initially had some fairly severe
problems caused by cached mode. I'm seeing less and less as patches are
released over Office Update. Also, I'm not all the way there yet, but I'm
coming to the conclusion that upgraded versions of Outlook have cached mode
problems, where clean installs do not. Either way, I'd disable cached mode
to see if it makes any difference in your "requesting data..." situation.

Whatever happens, please keep us posted.

"Gary Karasik" <gkarasik@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23LRs5x0NFHA.3492@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Is it a problem that might benefit from the collective wisdom of the NG?
>
> Well, since you asked....
>
> Client was recently switched from SBS 4.5 to 2003 Premium. Dell PE 2600
> server, 2g RAM, 4xRAID 5 HDs, 20 XP/SP1 workstations, Office 2003. Paging
> file is 3g split 2g on C: and 1g on D:. Both volumes are defragged every
> night with Diskeeper.
>
> Every morning clients log in and start Outlook. About 20 minutes after the
> first client has logged in, Outlook gets an exclamation point on the tray
> icon that says, "Requesting data from the server." Outlook hangs and won't
> show messages. This lasts for about 5 minutes. Sometimes only one client
> hangs while others work fine, sometimes several clients hang while others
> work fine, sometimes all clients hang. Problem gets progressively worse
> through the morning. Problem goes away by itself a little after noon, then
> system is fine all day.
>
> There's no evidence of Trojans or Viri.
>
> Problem recurs next morning. Problem always begins with one particular
> user, but she's also always the first one in and working, so very likely
> coincidental, but she's the one whose mailbox I want to recreate.
>
> Only workaround so far is to dismount the Mailbox Store (takes nearly
> three minutes for the dismount to complete), do an offline defrag, remount
> the store, then reboot. I have run ISINTEG/Alltests after every offline
> defrag and no errors show. After the above workaround, the system is fine
> all day until the next morning.
>
> There are no CPU-usage spikes apparent while the hanging occurs, nor are
> there any event-log errors. Also, while the problem is occurring, the
> Information Store service won't stop.
>
> There is also a problem, likely related, with Backup Exec. If Exchange is
> selected for backup, the backup hangs; deselect Exchange components, and
> the backup runs.
>
> Clearly something is happening overnight that's re-activating the problem.
> I've only recently noticed the problem with Backup Exec (because it sends
> a Backup Successful message out after the job times out), so I haven't had
> a chance to try not running the backup to see if the problem recurs. I've
> tried stopping the overnight Online Defrag, but the problem still
> recurred. Also, I can't logically reconcile the idea that the problem's
> being caused by the overnight backup with the fact that the problem goes
> away by itself in the afternoons.
>
> We're talking to MS--that's another story (I'm not happy about paying $245
> to be outsourced to India and a group of people who REALLY don't know the
> product; fortunately we finally got shuffled to someone stateside who is
> competent), and we will try to recreate the entire Exchange database over
> the weekend. We're also talking to Veritas about the backup problem.
> They've also got us running PerfWiz to see what shows up in the
> performance counters while the problems occurring.
>
> GaryK
>
> "Dave Nickason [SBS MVP]" <gwdibble@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
> message news:eqt6CfwNFHA.568@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Hi Gary - I'd do the former. I think you'll be making more work for
>> yourself if you delete the account, such as profile problems on the
>> client PC.
>>
>>
>>
>> "Gary Karasik" <gkarasik@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:O92hFuuNFHA.2964@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I'm trouble-shooting an Exchange problem, and as one test I want to
>>> recreate a user's mailbox. Before doing this I will export the user's
>>> mail to a PST file, then, after recreating the mailbox, I will import it
>>> into the new mailbox.
>>>
>>> Question is, What's the best way to do this? Delete the mailbox in
>>> Exchange, then recreate it in Exchange, then associate it with the user?
>>> Or delete the user account and mailbox, then recreate the user account?
>>>
>>> GaryK
>>>
>>
>>
>
>


.

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