Hi guys, hope someone can help with this, I've seen many similar error reports but all have been fixed with one of the procedures I've outlined below, but I still have the problem.
One user only gets an error attempting to send from Outlook, "The message store has reached its maximum size..." He can receive quite normally and no other user reports any problems sending or receiving.
Curiously OWA gives a slightly different error saying specifically "You have exceeded the storage limit on your mailbox...". This seems at odds with the first message which implies that the mail store is full, rather than the users individual allocation.
Small company network, SBS2003 fully patched. About 10 workstations, all are Win XP Pro, Outlook 2003 again fully patched. POP3 connector collects email from external host & distributes to user mailboxes. This setup has been in place & apparently working reliably for 3+ years. Approx 20Gb free space on the server data drive (D where Exchange message store is located) and about 8Gb on the system drive (C)
Tried so far (roughly in order):
Checked users mailbox limits in U&C against reported mailbox size, user is well inside their allocation of 2Gb. Archive older email anyway. outlook reports users mailbox size locally and on server as around 100k
Verified default mailbox size limit is 2Gb in Exchange System Manager
Re-booting the users computer
Deleting users local mail profile & re-creating one with a different name
Manually deleting the local OST file, on re-start Outlook confirmed it was rebuilding the local copy
Deselecting local cache mode & just working online to the Exchange server
Re-booting the server
Examine exchange message store size on server, approx 17Gb total (11Gb EDB, 6Gb STM)
Dismount store, backup & run ESEUTIL -d priv1.edb. No errors reported
Examine exchange message store size on server, approx 4Gb total (2.6Gb EDB, 1.3Gb STM)
Run isinteg -s Server01 -test allfoldertests. No errors reported
Mounted message store & rebooted server
Again deleted users local OST file & rebooted workstation
For all that work absolutely nothing has changed. All users apart from this one are totally problem free and this user can receive fine, but gets the exact same errors trying to send. Short of actually creating a brand new user account I'm out of ideas, anybody able to help?
Thx
Paul
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What service pack are you at in Exchange? SP 1 or 2? And is this Standard or Enterprise? Default store limit is 18GB. (That includes the STM and EDB files). Usually the exchange info store dismounts at the max...but I'd still give this a look since it's so close anyways...expand the maxdatabase size through the registry by following this article as much as the storage can handle.
http://technet.microsoft.c
Thanks for comments guys. We're running SBS 2003, it's standard version & fully patched, which I think means SP2 (not in front of the server right now)
I know the mail store was near it's limits & this may have triggered the problem, but after the offline defrag it's only 4Gb and no errors reported.
I'm not allowed more than one mailbox store on SBS Std am I?
If the mailbox store is only 4GB there's no reason to create a new store and migrate the user as the max store size wouldn't be the problem.
It's possible that something in the mailbox itself is corrupt inside the store. Is it possible to export all the users info into a PST, purge the mailbox, and then reimport from the PST?
Ok. Yes, there are a few steps. Here's the walkthrough:
1. Export the user's mailbox (contacts, tasks, calendar, mail, EVERYTHING) to a PST on his computer.
2. "Mail desable" the user in Active Directory by deleting the mailbox and also by removing all exchange attributes (two options in the exchange wizard in AD).
3. If you have multiple domain controllers (which I'm thinking you don't, but just as an FYI) replicate this deletion to all of them by installing the Windows Server 2003 Support Tools from the CD and running repadmin /syncall.
4. In Exchange System Manager, open the mailbox store and find the user's mailbox. Right click the mailbox and select "Purge"
5. Go back in Active Directory and re-enable the exchange features for the user.
6. From the user's workstation, import their PST (again, EVERYTHING) from the PST into the mailbox.
As an FYI, I will be leaving the office and heading home soon, so if you need any help in that time period, feel free to send a message to my AIM (SMAITLX) or Yahoo (insusa2003) and I will be more than happy to assist and update the thread here.
Many thanks, page1985's solution was just about spot on. A couple of extra's for anyone else trying to follow this solution:
After completing stages 1-3 of the walkthrough the "Purge" option was greyed out in Exchange System Mgr. It was necessary to expand the Server > First Storage Group > Mailbox Store tree then right-click the Mailboxes folder and run the cleanup agent. Subsequently the users mailbox could be purged.
After making the user a new mailbox, on going back into Outlook the user's messages were all present and correct, due to running in local cache mode, they were in the OST file on the local machine, so it wasn't necessary to restore the PST file, however I wouldn't skip the step of creating the PST as it's a backup in the event of OST corruption/loss and I guess it's possible that previous sync issues may mean the local OST isn't fully up to date in all cases.
Interesting point actually, I assume that if Outlook is online, but in cache mode, the export to PST is done from the Exchange file store, not the local OST file. Are they sync'd first before the export? Perhaps a query for another day.
Thanks again for the help
Hi I have SBS2003r2 server with exchange2003sp1 installed on it.I am using third party software as Pop3 connector.Smtp and pop3 service on server is disabled.Exchange 2003 is just acting as database
for users (around 30).From yesterday exchange is not working error in application stating database size of 16GB, due to which exchange stops.
Tried to defrag the priv1.edb through eseutil, it worked for couple of minutes then again exchange stops
Is their any solution without installing exchange sp2 patch.
Thanks
Guru.
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: page1985Posted on 2009-09-16 at 13:31:59ID: 25349802
You may be at or near the "logical" size restrition placed on the information store by Microsoft for Exchange Standard.
Try creating a second mailbox database and moving just this user to that new database. If this corrects, your issue is a store problem. If it doesn't, we may need to start tracing the message store while the user sends mail to see at what point in the queue process its being rejected.