So I have an exchange server that on a regulary bases, each weekend, stops responding to requests from client It has not reached any size limits, all the drivers are up to date, there are not hardware problems I can find Yet on each weekend at a different time and on either saturday or sunday it stops working I dont have any process's that are running on the weekend anymore, so I am not sure what is doing this Any ideas?

Is your Exchange version an eval or rc?

Sorry I forgot the version it is running on SBS 2003 So exchange is 2003 SP2

Hello, Can you be more specific? Is the mailbox store dimounting? Is it the SMPT service that stops, which service stops? Look in the log files, there you will find the clue you need to figure out what is happening. Can you post back any exchange-related errors? After is stops working does it begin to work again by itself at the beginning of the weekend? Any ptasks/rocesses running on the weekend? Look in the scheduled tasks. Miguel Miguel Fra / Falcon ITS Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase Sharepoint Site

Hi, The mailbox store is not dismounting SMPT's services are still running I have looked in the log files and cant see anything, there are some active sync errors, but I believe those are related to the overall issue Just to clarify a bit, what happens is the outlook client connect and say wait to update folder and dont progress from there Recently it takes a server re-boot to restore normal operations

Hello, What about the Exchange maintenance? Is that running on weekends? Can you see if system and/or application logs reveal anything? MiguelMiguel Fra / Falcon ITS Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase Sharepoint Site

So this only happens on weekends? It runs fine all week then on weekend this behavior occurs? Are you running exchange scheduled maintenance on weekends? If so can you stop that so we can determine if the online maintenance is causing this? What happens if you wait it out, does outlook finally synchronize eventually? Could it be that the system is slow due to maintenance? Are you running a backup on weekend? Can you please set the logging level to maximum logging: Exchange System Manager Administrative Groups Find your Server Properties, Diagnostic Logging Tab Set to Maximum CheersMiguel Fra / Falcon ITS Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase Sharepoint Site

Exchange maintance is not running on the weekends anymore, already moved that one I checked both logs quite extensivly and there is nothing that shows up as an error or warning during the time I believe the problem starts As soon as it happens the active sync errors show up, which i believe is because the Active sync devices cant read email anymore The event id of the active sync errors are 3007 "Event Type: Warning Event Source: Server ActiveSync Event Category: None Event ID: 3007 Date: 8/11/2010 Time: 9:06:10 AM User: domain\user Computer: server Description: Exchange mailbox Server response timeout: Server: [server.domain.LOCAL] User: [user@domain.com]. Exchange ActiveSync Server failed to communicate with the Exchange mailbox server in a timely manner. Verify that the Exchange mailbox Server is working correctly and is not overloaded. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. " I will check after this weekend to see if again if anything shows up, but any ideas with this so far?

Sorry I forgot the version it is running on SBS 2003 So exchange is 2003 SP2 Do you have enough Cals to the number of mailboxes?

Yeah it runs fine all week the non the weekend it does this, saturday or sunday, My backups are running on weekdays at the moment so this Nope already checked for all types of scheduled tasks and nothing is running on the weekend Outlooks never connects as far as I know, can't wait too long as my client needs thier email up and working so we have to fix it sooner rather then later I have checked and as best as I can tell there is no systems slowness at all I will log in and increase the logging, hopefully it will show something

Yep CAL's are covered, and the mailboxe is nowhere near its size limit of 75GB

Hmmm... Check the server security logs and/or your firewall logs for failed logins, you might be getting a disctionary attack from some script bunny during these times and they can bring your server to a crawl thus resulting in a timeout. Look for failed login credentials like admin, root, administrator with incorrect PW. Also, bring up the performance monitor and check the system performance, the server may be paging because of some memory leak application and thus crawling slow. Check the performance monitor during these times and see if that's the case. MiguelMiguel Fra / Falcon ITS Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase Sharepoint Site

Hello, When this happens can you telnet into the Exchange server ? Can you log in using OWA during this problem? Miguel Miguel Fra / Falcon ITS Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase Sharepoint Site

I havent tried Telnet when the problem occurs, but when it is up and working it is all normal I have checked the security logs and there werent any failed logins last time it happened I havent setup performance monitor yet, it is kinda of hard to watch it happen or to know the exact times as it does tend to vary on th times it happens All of which makes it harder to track down It is a real odd one, this server I have just remebered that this seemed to start happening after there was a HDD died in the server, but it was part of a RAID 1

Yep CAL's are covered, and the mailboxe is nowhere near its size limit of 75GB From memory when it gets close to the DB limit it automatically dismount or when you almost out of disk space. Look in the apps log for event 445 or 1216 saying something like reached its limit.

Has the RAID been fully rebuild? Is it s/w or h/r raid? Is there a utility to check consistency? Can you take the server down for a few hours and run a checkdisk? You might also run a defrag on the Exchange DB while you're at it. You are right, it's weird. Cheers Miguel Fra / Falcon ITS Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase Sharepoint Site

It acutally dismounts once you get over the 75GB limit I know this because another client is over the limit I have checked the size and it is at 41.2GB for both the mdb file and stm file

Yep the RAID is fully re-built, the raid card made me watch the whole thing run thorugh before it would boot the OS It is a hardware RAID There isnt really anything there to check consistency, like I said it is not the best raid controller i have seen Just ran a checkdisk last night and there were no problems found, also update all the drivers and ran a offline hardware diagnostic just in case Yeah I can try to run a defrag, have to arrange a time to run it though, offline defrags tend to take a while Almost getting to the point where I think a re-build might be easier, I am really stuck as what else I can do to fix this

Hang in there! It may be you have a consistency problem in your DB caused by the RAID failure. Try running a defrag on the DB before throwing in the towel. Also, during that time you will undoubtedly get more posts here with more/fresh ideas. Hang in there! MiguelMiguel Fra / Falcon ITS Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase Sharepoint Site

Did you make the reg change in the registry to allow the 75GB limit? located at HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\Servername\Private-Mailbox GUID? Do you have AV running on the server? scanning the exchange bin and database folder?

Thanks The DB was on a different RAID array so I dont think thier are incosistancy but I will run it anyway and see what happens I hope so

Yeah that change has been made to the registry I do have AV on the server but I have set it up to not scan the exchange folders, one of the first things I tried

So the DB on a different RAID volume or on a RAID subsystem? When the problem occurs have you checked that the O/S is not losing connectivity with that RAID volume? Could be a hardware problem.Miguel Fra / Falcon ITS Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase Sharepoint Site

Just FYI, This does not sound like a DB limit problem since the there is no dismount. Also, you should never increase the DB limit to the full capacity. Always leave an extra Gb, in case it does reach the limit and dismounts, you can increase the limit to it full capcaity then and be able to mount it to work on it. MiguelMiguel Fra / Falcon ITS Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase Sharepoint Site

Hi, I really read only your issue in top and providing some suggestion. 1: Please disable backup on weekend 2: Disable AV on sevrer 3: Any third party software which don't affect exchange BOX, Disable it. Then use EXMON for 2003 and monitor real time MAPI connection from clients and monitor it. http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Microsoft-Exchange-Server-User-Monitor.html Are you really sure, there is no any activity start in weekend in AD for all users account ?. For me its looking some thing related with AD as you are able to connect exchange. Anil

do you face any DNS issues on the weekend?

I have run a full series of hardware checks on the server and everything came back fine But I suppose it could still be an issue there

There was a minor dns thing I just changed one of my forwarders was typed in wrong Simple typo by the looks of it, which is now fixed

Yeah I am really sure there is no activty on the weekend this has been checked repeatedly I dont think AV is the issue as it has been set to not scan any of the exchange folders at this stage

Have you had a chance to run eseutil /mh on the DB? If you can, I would suggest to try building another exchange 2003 server and move the mailboxes over to the new machine and then leave it for a while or so to see if it reoccur. If yes, then there is probably something wrong with the DB.

Just had another thought. Try defragging the DB and to shrink it and see what happen.

Sorry havent had a chances to run the offline defrag yet, I am organizing a time with my client to do this as soon as possible I will note that over the weekend the server kept working, but today the server slowed to a crawl and then crashed With the stop code of C4, which is the driver verifier failed one of its tests, which i have disabled for now

Are you sure that nothing is chewing up all the RAM and the server starts paging? Have you checked the security logs to make sure some script bunny is not trying to crack your admin PW pior to the slowdown? MiguelMiguel Fra / Falcon ITS Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase Sharepoint Site

Nothing I could see seemed to be chewing up ram, today's slow down, it was hard to tell Task Manager was taking forever to load I tried to get process explorer runing, but server crashed before i could load it I just checked the security logs and there hasnt been any attacks for a couple of days, and it was only a brief try

Exchange 2003 had some issues with depleting paged and nonpaged memory pools and there are some very specific settings needed in order to work around it **I"m not familiar with how this applies specifically to SBS2003 though** See http://blogs.technet.com/b/dblanch/archive/2009/04/18/paged-and-non-paged-pool-issues-on-exchange-2000-2003.aspx http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2005/07/05/407330.aspx Although you should be seeing issues in the event log if this was the issue, I still wanted to point this out because it's very common. A single driver (for hardware or any antivirus/security product, for example) can have a dramatic effect on this. It's just what I think of when Exchange 2003 mysteriously stops responding. :/

Well I have put those changes in on the server and will see how it goes over the weekend In the mean time anything else that might work or suggest to try?

Did the Exchange server stop working again?

Just an update, it has been 2 weeks and no failures with the email! Not sure which fix exactly was the one that sorted it, but Looks like the mail server is stable and working Thanks for all the help