Microsoft Exchange- Isinteg Command

The Microsoft Exchange server database may become damaged or corrupted due to many reasons, such as system failure. When this happens, it is usually urgent to restore the system to a stable and working state. There are different symptoms and causes of database corruption that require different procedures and tools to eradicate problems. In general there are two major types of corruption of an Exchange database:

Physical corruption: Usually physical corruption of database occurs due to a hardware issue that may be corrected by restoring system from backup.

Logical corruption:  Generally logical corruption occurs at the application level; corruption in the database's engine will lead to database engine failure from incorrect indexing or incorrect reference counts. You can run Isinteg utility to check and fix problems with the information store or database engine.
 

Isinteg Utility- An Overview

The Isinteg (Information Store Integrity checker) detects and removes common logical errors in the Exchange server information store database (public and private) and in errors related to the JET database engine. The utility scans all the data in the information store including mailboxes, public and private folders, tables, and the B-tree structure of ESE pages that is organized to form a logical view. Isinteg also checks unusable objects, attributes and their relationships. Isinteg performs a thorough scan for incorrect values and incorrect referencing of objects in the information store.

Different modes of Executing Isinteg Utility

 You can execute this utility in four different modes listed below:
Check:  This mode of Isinteg scans the information store database table for errors, unreferenced objects and incorrect reference counts, etc. and displays the result of the scan without fixing errors.
 Fix: This mode of Isinteg scans the information store and fixes the errors that have been found during scan.
Test:  This mode of Isinteg is performed on particular information store database and displays the results. You have to select a test option if you want to run this Isinteg in either Check or Fix mode. Check mode and Fix modes are the superset of Test mode.
Dump: This mode of Isinteg dumps the information store database into a particular file.
 

Run Isinteg Utility

After executing Eseutil commands , Run the Exchange Isinteg command to scan and repair the information store at logical level. Open command prompt window, and

• Type Isinteg –s  -fix –test alltests
• Select the store that you repaired when it prompted
• Continue to re-run this command until zero issues are reported.