Random and arbitrary email failures in Exchange 2010
Base level:Exchange 2010 on Server 2008 R2(Recent replacement of Exchange 2003 on Server 2003)Single domain. SImple structure. 180 users. 5 mail dbs.What happens:Users get following response to occasional internal emails: Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups: Fred Nurk (fred.nurk@mycompany.com.au)The e-mail system had a problem processing this message. Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. This occurs at random times and with random users. The same user can resend the identical email and the email may not fail. It often fails with multiple recipients, but then when IT staff go to observe it does not.Sometimes fail with attachments, sometimes with multiple recipients. But only internal. External is always fine.What has been done:Cache mode disabled. OST deleted. No change.Profile removed. Recreated. No change.User on another PC - problem not observed.If we could reproduce this issue it would be far easier to diagnose, but it appears seldom and at random times. Management wants to throw people at the problem, but we realistically cannot have someone sit with workers in the hope of encountering an email failure sometime during the day.Any ideas or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
January 24th, 2010 5:04pm

ANything in the event or message tracking logs?HAve you run ExBpa and the MailFlow Troubleshooting tools in the Toolbox against the servers?
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January 24th, 2010 5:06pm

Hi,What is the version of your outlook?Have you uninstalled Exchange 2003?How did you upgrade exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010?Please check event log and then post the detail error event information here.Regards,Xiu
January 25th, 2010 9:57am

Thanks Andy,This is a real puzzle. We feel it almost certain due to something to do with 'cache mode'.If we delete OST, kill profile, recreate, it comes back (at random, and less frequent).If we build new PC or rebuild current PC it does not return. The event logs and message tracking logs have no relevant events. ExBPA has given a few 'critical' notices, but most I think are bugs in exBPA! MailFlow troubleshooting is OK. As I mentioned, we cannot reproduce this at will.Xiu,> What is the version of your outlook?2007 SP2 >Have you uninstalled Exchange 2003?Yes. Server was decommissioned.>How did you upgrade exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010?Built 2010, added to existing network, migrated mailboxes and PFs across. All simple and 'standard'.One thing.... "Use Cached Exchange mode" is greyed out, and selected. It seems that all users who had cache mode enabled when they reconnected after the 2003 server went away, have this situation. If they did not have cache mode, it is still greyed, but not selected. 95% of the users with problems are the cache mode people. (ie, notebook users mostly, ie, 'important' people.)We have tried many things to remove the cache mode greying and selection to no avail. (Except rebuilding PC.)Again, thanks folks....
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January 26th, 2010 11:31am

Hi, Please try to check the following registry to see if we have disabled cache mode. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WindowsMessagingSubsystem\Profiles\Profile_name\13dbb0c8aa05101a9bb000aa002fc45aValue: 00036601 Disabled: Type: REG_BINARY Length: 4 byte(s) 04 00 00 00Enabled: Type: REG_BINARY Length: 4 byte(s) 84 19 00 00 Note: First byte is for "Cached Mode" Enabled (84) /disabled (04) If it is not the case, then please check if you have outlook policy set on the user. We can force user to use cache mode by modify the outlook ADM template. Note: 1. Microsoft Outlook ADM template on the Global catalog server by editing the group policy 2. Go to add/remove templates and choosing outlk12.adm and click close 3. Then navigated to Cache Exchanged mode by going to ->administrative templates->tools |email accounts ->cache exchange mode 4. There are two policies which we can apply to enable cache or online mode 5. To enable cache mode we tested the setting below 6. Disable cache mode on new profiles ->set it to disabled 7. Cache exchange mode(file|cache exchange mode)->set it to enabled 8. Refreshed the policies on the global catalog server and the client machine 9. Launched Outlook it is configured in cache mode. Regards, Xiu
January 27th, 2010 4:48am

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