Exchange 2000 issue - help!

[Badgeroonie]

I have Exchange 2000 server SP3(standard) installed on our main server (Win 2000 SP3)- when I reboot this server, users find new emails in their inbox. These emails are in fact old emails which have reappeared in their inbox as if 'just received'.

Strangely, it is not all emails since a certain time that reappear, but only a few (at most) emails selected randomly from the last couple of weeks!

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to fix this, as it causes people to bombard me with support calls? Does anyone else have this problem?

 

[xmsre]

I suspect these are mail that was stranded in the MTA or SMTP directory. I've seen this many times on misconfigured clusters, where the MTA is on a local drive on each node. When you move the exchange group to the other node, messages become stranded in the MTA on the local drive of the inactive node. When you move the exchange group back, the standed messages are no longer stranded and get delivered. Of course, now more messages are stranded on the other node. On a cluster, the MTA and SMTP directories need to be on a shared disk.

If this is not a cluster, then I'd look for issues with the MTA [if you have X400 connectors or Exchange 5.5 in your org], directories for foreign connectors [the SBS pop connector, the notes connector, etc.], or the SMTP queue directory to get to the root of the problem. Turning on message tracking or examining the message headers might help provide a clue as to what is going on.

 

[Badgeroonie]

The setup I have is quite basic - one server only (No cluster), exchange is version 2000. There are no X400 connectors. We only use MS Office XP (no lotus notes stuff etc) including Outlook.

Given that info are you able to suggest how I proceed in any more detail?

Thanks.

 

[ddimov]

Same situation, several smtp connectors. What I noticed all the stranded letters are multipart mime messages. Does this ring a bell, anyone?

Regards,

Dmitrij

 

[ddimov]

one more thing I forgot to add - stranded messages are accumulated in in:
%Exchsrvr_install_dir%\Mailroot\vsi 1\Queue