Users can not login to retrieve email on Exchange Server 2003

First things first: What do you mean by no one can communicate with the mail server - Outlook won't connect, OWA fails, the server is dead?

If the server's alive, are all the service started and the information store mounted?

The server is alive, all services atre started and the information store mounted.
 We posted before the question as follows:

We have an Exchange server 2003  SP2, users cannot retrieve email from the server.
The information store was full, reached the 18GB limit. We expanded the data base, check for consistensy issues, and defragmented. Everithing is clean but users can not get their email.
We check the event viewer on the server and  found  under application   POP3SVC error with a red X  (Error 0x8004050a occurred while rendering message 0005-0000002b040f for download for user xxx@donmain.com. ), Event ID 3014 Server activeSync error (The Exchange mailbox Server: [server name.domain.com] has reached its timeout threshold. The mailbox server will be protected from new requests for [60] seconds. ), and  Server ActiveSync warning ID 3007 (Exchange mailbox Server response timeout: Server: [server name.domain.com] User: [user@domain.com]. Exchange ActiveSync Server failed to communicate with the Exchange mailbox server in a timely manner. Verify that the Exchange mailbox Server is working correctly and is not overloaded.  )

A few questions:

1) How do your clients connect?  Outlook/OWA/Other
2) Are you clients using POP3 or connecting to Exchange from within the domain?
3) What is the exact symptom/error/other when clients try to connect?  What exactly happens?
4) Have you check to make sure all Exchange related services are started?

Thanks..

Localy the computers use Outlook 2000.  
The clients are displaying the following message:
Requesting data from Microsoft Excahnge... (This in a window title)
Outlook is retrieving data from Microsoft Exchange Server "Server Name". You can cancel the request or minimize this message to the Windws taskbat until Outlook closes the messages automatically.  
The computers continue  displaying this message in a cycle and over and over again, eventualy after while will diplay some contents of the email box, but if you click on any function (e.g. Inbox) the cycle begins again. Looks like the communications with Exchange is too slow?

Interesting... have you tried to connect via OWA?  This would eliminate or confirm issues possible with the Information Store ..

Yes i tried and I can not get in or takes long time to connect.

Have you checked the Aging Keep Time attribute in Exchange?

How I can check that please

Why would that attribute be a factor in this scenario?  That only determines the length of time  a view index is kept.

It seems that you have problem with the RUS- Recipient Update Service.

the restored exchange still points to old exchange server, you may what to check which server is used on RUS by follwoing this link.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319065

RUS should point to your "new" exchange server, let the user logoff and log on again and open their mailbox thru outlook.

Hope this help.

I would like to know how I can move the information store to a new exchange 2003 server  from backup (NT Bakup)

How about the AD? are you going to restore the same?

Be aware of the following:
- Server Name and Domain Name
- Organization Name and Storage Group Name
- You can freshly install the exchange with the above condition
- unmount the stores (Mailbox/ Public Folder)
- on each unmounted stores, make it as "Database can be overwrite by a restore" check box checked.
- By NTBackup, you can rstore the Exchange DB.
- -OR- restore it as "File" restore
          - Using NTbackup, restore it on deifferent location.
           - once restored, boot on Safe Mode.
          - copy the entire files/ folders from  the restored folder to the target "new" exchange folder.
- Then check the RUS, as my above comment.
**
It seems that you have problem with the RUS- Recipient Update Service.

the restored exchange still points to old exchange server, you may what to check which server is used on RUS by follwoing this link.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319065

RUS should point to your "new" exchange server, let the user logoff and log on again and open their mailbox thru outlook.

Hope this help.

Ad is not going to be the same.
My idea is to built a temporary server, restore the information store and recover the email to a a pst file for ech of the 15 mail boxes. Do you think this is possible

Thank you for those tips . I am going to work  implementing the temporary server idea to recover the existing emails.
As I mentionend before users can not retrive email information from the existing server (Single domain controller enviroment), my idea is to disable Exchange in the current server,  add a new  2008 server with Exchange 2010  to the existing enviroment to allow users to receive new emails, and at later time demote the old server.
Any ideas or suggestions how to procced and how I will deal with existing user accounts that already have exchange functions on it.