we had a power fliker in an old building where one of our clients stores their Ex 2003 box.Now the Mailbox Store and Public Folder Store will not mount. We keep getting the error message of "Error 0xffffff01 starting Storage Group /DC=local/DC=RLF/CN=Configuration/CN=Services/CN=Microsoft Exchange/CN=RLF/CN=Administrative Groups/CN=first administrative group/CN=Servers/CN=SERVER-01/CN=InformationStore/CN=First Storage Group on the Microsoft Exchange Information Store. Storage Group - Initialization of Jet failed."There isn't a valid backup to restore. Google was no help,I could only find one other issue similar to ours, and his problem is still unresolved12 months later. We could reinstall Exchange, but that seems very drastic...Don't you love inheriting others peoples sins???Does anyone have any thoughts what we could try next?

Joseph,Follow the steps below:c:\program files\exchsrvr\bin\eseutil /mh "c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\name of Exchange database.edb"Check if the state = clean, probably it isn't because the database went down hard, if it is clean move all log files to another folder and mount the db again.If the shutdown is dirty run eseutil /p on the database, make sure you have enough space on the size where the tempdb is placed.c:\program files\exchsrvr\bin\eseutil /p "c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\name of Exchange database.edb" "c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\name of Exchange database.stm"/Te:\tempdb.edbAfter the db has been fixed run:ISINTEG fix -test alltestsIf this hasn't fixed the issue you should try to run eseutil /r but read the following document before doing this:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998075(EXCHG.65).aspxRegards,JohanRegards,Johanblog: www.johanveldhuis.nl

Thank you very Much Johan.I went through all the steps that you suggested and the database was repaired. But, it would not mount. This customer only has 5 mailboxes so it was just simpler that quicker to reinstall Exchange to a new directory and .pst the email boxes. it only took a couple hours to go through those steps. i can see the wisdom if the issues were involving a customer with many more mailboxes than 5.thanks again for you help.

Issue description: Mailbox store cant be mounted after an unscheduled power outage Check info: 1. After ran Isinteg command, is there no more error in the output? 2. If you reproduce the issue after followed Johans suggestions, did the error different with the first one that you posted? Is there any further error or warning event in the application log on the exchange server? 3. Quote: This customer only has 5 mailboxes so it was just simpler that quicker to reinstall Exchange to a new directory and .pst the email box? Does it mean that issue has been solved by reinstalling exchange and imports the mailbox data from PST files to users mailboxes? And you want to know the procedure for such scenario if the similar case were encountered in the future, right? Error 0xffffff01 indicates JET_errDatabaseBufferDependenciesCorrupted, which can occur if there is a power failure (like this case) or hardware failure while Exchange is trying to write to the database. And therere two methods to resolve such problem: Repair the store (You have tried it) Restore from backup (It seems that your customers didnt backup the store regularly) For more info, please see KB 829166

Agree with James, and once you repair the database you need to remove all the logfiles, checkpiont file from the logfile and sysfile location and mount the database.There are only few possible ways to tackle with this kind of scenario.1) Always recommended to restore from the last good know backup.2) Reinstalling exchange will not help, Cause the issue indicates either there is issue with Hardware or Database itself.3) Try mounting with blank store and if that helps.4) Take the backup of the corrupted database and repair the database on non-exchange server and see if that helps.5) You can take the PST of the local outlook PST if only the users were in cache mode.6) There are 3rd party softwares available who can able to extract PST from the corrupted database.Few things needs to be consider.1) Always use last good known backup.2) Not recommended to inject PST to the production database, cause that will break SIS of the database.Arun Kumar | MCSE - 2K3 + Messaging | ITIL-F V3