ExMerge can't find restored mailboxes.How to find restored mialboxes?

[rbby2003]

I would appreciate your input very much. Thanks in advance.

I am restoring Exchange 2003 mailboxes on a different Windows SBS 2003 server. After I restore Exchange mailboxes on another Windows SBS 2003 server, I can see all the restored mailboxes on Exchange System Manager, but I do not have the related users in Active Directory Users and Computers as in my production Windows SBS 2003 server. I tried to use ExMerge to retrieve my client's mailbox since the client wants to get back some deleted folders in Outlook, but I can only choose the users I created on this test machine to retrieve, I can not choose to retrieve the restored mailboxes. I created the same user on the test machine before restoring Exchange, and now it shows 2 same users on Exchange System Manager.

How can I retrieve the mailboxes while I do not have the user account to log on in Exchange?

I used NTbackup for backup, and I tried to restore the whole computer 2 times and after restoration, computer would not reboot although it completed restoration. Later on I reinstalled Windows SBS 2003, using the same computer name and Active Domain name. After restoring Exchange mailboxes, now I can see the mailboxes, some mailboxes are 1.5 GB, some are 500MB, how can I get PST files out of them please?

 

[58sniper]

If you right click on them in ESM, can you attach them to user accounts? They need to be attached to user accounts to get at them with exmerge.

Pat Richard, MCSE(2) MCSA:Messaging, CNA(2)
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[rbby2003]

Thank you, Pat.
I tried to right click the mailboxes in ESM after the restoration, and the only 2 choices RECONNECT AND PURGE are greyed, and I can not do anything to the restored mailboxes although they are showing in ESM. For the new created users, their mailboxes are working fine. I restarted the server and it remains the same.

And under folder MDBDATA\, files priv1.edb, priv1.stm, pub1.edb and pub1.stm are showing the right size, before the restoration they were very small, and now they are a few GB, and they are the right size when I compare them with my production server.
How can I get PST files from the restored mailboxes?
Any input will be appreciated.

 

[msh2007]

hi rbby2003! I tried the same thing as you. I had the same problem and I think its not possible to do like this because if i remember well when i searched on internet I found out that ExMerge shows only the mailboxes for which their are accounts. Or in other words the MailboxGUID attribute of the mailbox must match with that of an active directory account.
I tried to restore mailboxes the same way as you did but I could not due to this problem.
may b somebody knows how to overcome this problem but apparently there is no solution except having the original accounts in AD to which MBXs are related.
Thanks

 

[rbby2003]

msh2007, 58sniper,
Thank you for your input.
The problem has been resolved.

Later on I found out that in Exchange System Manager, I need to go to Action and perform Run Cleanup Agent, when I am on the page and can see all the mailboxes under Mailbox Store\mailboxes. After I perform Run Cleanup Agent, the restored mailboxes allows me to reconnect to a user that does not have a mailbox. Then I can setup Outlook as Exchange client and export to PST file.

Thank you for your input and advice and sharing your experience.

 

[58sniper]

Ah - ok. I should have mentioned that in my earlier reply, as that's needed to attach to the user accounts. My bad!

Pat Richard, MCSE(2) MCSA:Messaging, CNA(2)
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[bobsa32]

I have recently had the exact same problem, because i set up the user accounts on the new server before i did the exchnage restore the new users had mailboxes, after i did the restore there where two mailboxes for each user. in order to merge the two i had to delete the newly created mailbox and then reconect the old mailbox to the new user.