Exchange 2003 SP2 Systemmailbox & permissions errors
Hello, We're experiencing some odd issues with Exchange 2003 SP2 running on Windows 2003 EE SP2 and I'm hoping someone can point us in the right direction. Our AD schema version is 44 (2008 RTM), Exchange schema version is 14625 (Exchange 2007 SP3). When we began our Exchange 2007 transition last year on VMWare, it detected problems with Exchange permissions not being inherited on two containers. That was resolved and it allowed us to continue installing. I don't recall if we actually installed the MBX role because my MBX server budget was given to another project. So we decided to go directly to 2010 this year. I opened a Microsoft case to have them assist me in removing the E2007 references in E2003 because the E2007 VM servers were accidentally deleted without a proper uninstall. The current state has not prevented us from beginning the transition to Exchange 2010 RTM. The CAS & HT roles are installed, but the MBX role has not been installed because of a LDAP query problem with an Exchange 2003 recipient policy. 1) In trying to upgrade our Quest MessageStats, we found it wouldn't install because of errors regarding the SystemMailbox. Quest support gave us the following URL's to resolve the problem. We already have 4 stores, so we can't create another. One of those stores is empty (except for the SystemMailbox) and one other has just one co-workers mailbox which it shows has ~50 corrupted messages, although he can open all messages just fine in Outlook 2010. He ended up moving them to a local PST, deleting/purging the messages, and then his mailbox would move. We now have two empty stores we could remove, but I was told there was a special procedure to removing an unused store, something to do with the matching SystemMailbox? Store A: Need to keep, contains SMTP only. Store I: OK to remove, contains SMTP only. Store M: Need to keep, contains SMTP & System Attendant only. Store S: OK to remove, contains SMTP We have (4) SystemMailbox accounts, two with blank Exchange Home Server locations (in the Users OU), and the other two in the SystemObjects OU (one for our OWA server, and one for our disaster recovery Exchange 2003 server located in another state). https://support.quest.com/Search/SolutionDetail.aspx?id=SOL3309&category=Solutions&SKB=1 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=316622 My questions on this issue are 1) Why does Exchange consider messages corrupt when the client does not?, 2) Any special procedures to remove empty stores?, 3) Would the only way to resolve the odd SystemMailbox issues be creating new stores and moving mailboxes? Having to deal with a bunch of apparently fake corrupt messages is not desirable. What else needs to be done to clean this up? 2) We have a project which involves using exmerge to export messages from Store "M" (above) to PST's before removing the mailbox from specific accounts. Using my own credentials, it's will only allow me to export certain mailboxes, and the others give me this error: [12:13:13] Error opening message store (MSEMS). Verify that the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service is running and that you have the correct permissions to log on. (0x8004011d) My question on this issue is given that the mailboxes are in the same store, how can my permissions be different on different mailboxes? At the site container, the delegate option shows that I have the 'Exchange Full Administrator (Inherited)' role, and I have the same inherited permissions on the store in question. Thanks! Jim
February 17th, 2011 11:27am

If you have system mailboxes in the default store, then Exchange looks after those itself. The quickest way to deal with them is to drop the store in ESM, then immediately restart the Information Store service. Exchange will recreate the system mailboxes in another database on its own. No need for you to do anything. Nothing special. The permissions model for Exchange changed, and this could be where you are having problems. If you have Domain Admin rights, then you would not have access to the mailboxes. You would need to use a non-Domain Admin account with the requires mailbox level permissions, plus Exchange View Only Admin to enumerate the mailboxes. As for why Outlook can read "corrupt" messages, that is hard to say. It could be that the corruption is not in an element that Outlook needs. I have seen this before with foreign characters (Chinese etc) where Outlook displayed them fine, but move mailbox coughed. I had to remove them for it to continue. Simon.Simon Butler, Exchange MVP Blog | Exchange Resources | In the UK? Hire Me.
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
February 17th, 2011 12:17pm

This topic is archived. No further replies will be accepted.

Other recent topics Other recent topics