Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of Henry Elp
Henry ElpFlag for United States of America

asked on

When moving mailboxes, sometimes a "ghost" mailbox remains in old store

Hello, we are running Exchnage 2003 SP2 on a Windows 2003 SP1 box.  I have 1 storage group with 5 stores(4 mail stores and 1 public folder store).

Recently I have been moving mailboxes from one of my stores to the others b/c I believe someone has some corrupt items in their mailbox.  When I do some testing and move my mailbox, my mailbox moves to the new store but also a "ghost" copy will stay behind in the old store.  There are never any messages in it and the size is around 500k.  I have been moving a bunch of my users and no one has had this happen to them, until last night.  

I moved one of my co-workers and the same thing happened to him.  His mailbox moved to the new store but a ghost mailbox was left behind in the old store... with no messages items and a size of 600k.  The only thing I can really think of that separates my co-worker and I from everyone else is we are domain admins and Exchange admins.  Anyone know why this would happen?  Also just to let you know, when I move mailboxes, I set it to fail if any corrupt items are found(so I know whose mailbox is the problem).. and since my co-workers mailbox has been moved, im assuming it isn't corrupt.  

Thanks
David  
Avatar of tomo999
tomo999
Flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland image

Hmmm interesting one. When you move a mailbox between stores, it actually creates a new mailbox in the new store, moves all the items across, and then removes the old mailboxes from the old store (this is actually a recommended fix from Microsoft on how to fix a corrupt mailbox).

It looks like the last part of the move is failing. Are there any errors in the event log after you try this? Can you manually remove the mailboxes from the old store (make sure you have a backup before you try this)? Does the account you are using to move the mailboxes have adequate rights over domain administrator mailboxes?
I've seen that happen when the mailbox was open during the move.  Use System Manager to make sure there are no logons to that mailbox before moving it.
Avatar of Henry Elp

ASKER

Thanks for the replies.  

Geniph, could it have been because we were using Outlook in cached mode?  All my other users that I have moved who have NOT had the same problem were not using Outlook in cached mode.  

David
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of geniph
geniph
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of ooharris
ooharris

does anyone know how to solve this problem?
The way i finally fixed it was I moved all mailboxes out of the store and just left the ghost mailboxes in the old store.  I then deleted the store and associated DBs.  Just make sure that your users' mailboxes are indeed on the new store before deleting the old store.