We have a strange problem on an Exchange 2003 Server (as part of SBS 2003): Since more than one year the scheduled OAB generation does not even start. Therefore after adding a new user you have to generate the OAB update manually (in the System Manager). That works fine. We already set the diagnostic level on the server to maximum for ExchangeSA/OAB-generator, but there are no entries at all at the scheduled times. Only for the manual updates we have a lot of entries. We also created a new oab and changed the schedule settings to a lot of different values. No changes at all. The Exchange SA service is running of cause. There are a lot of articles about OAB generation problems but our OAB generations seems to work fine (if started manually), only the scheduling seems to have a problem. Does anyone have suggestions on how to locate or maybe solve the problem? Thanks P.

Have you run ExBpa against the server?

Yes, we already tried the BPA. There were a few warnings (e. g. swap file size, and a missing registry key). We could not restart the server since the suggested changes, but I doubt that it would change things for OAB generation. P.

So it just stopped working all of a sudden? When you restart the System Attendant, any errors in the event logs? I have to admit, I have never heard of this.

We didn't even notice it first because it is only a small organisation. Thus we have no idea if there has been any corresponding problem. After a restart of the SA service there are only informational events except of a warning that a message tracking file was deleted. For me it is also a very strange problem. Is there a chance to get more debug information? Probably the scheduling process is broken. I already found the scheduling information inside the AD but this value is completly the same as on another Exchange 2003 (also SBS 2003) computer with no problems. Thanks, P.

Other than the OALGenerator diags, Im not aware of any more. I assume you have applied Exch 2003 SP2 and the latest updates?

Yes, the latest updates including Service Pack 2 are installed. The mad.exe (SA Service) is alive. For example there are two events (9095 "The MAD Monitoring thread is initializing", 9096 "The MAD Monitoring thread is initialized.") fired yesterday evening. I have really no idea what more to check. Perhaps we can use a workaround and create a "scheduled task" which activates the OABgen process. Is there any "command" we could use for this? Thanks, P.

Hello, This is a pretty unusual issue. I personally have not seen this before either. Considering you have restarted the S.A. with logging increased, and you have recreated the OAB, this leaves the system attendant process itself. There is still a possibility that there could be a problem with the public folder database itself. You may consider taking the public folder store offline, then running "Eseutil /g" to check for physical corruption. Followed by "ISinteg -fix -s servername -test alltests". If these two items don't check anything, i would end up tracing the mad.exe process, which would require a support case. I hope this helps. Kevin Ca - MSFT