Ghost Mailboxes in Exchange 5.5 1

[Tobinsk]

We appear to have a problem with several mailboxes on our Exchange 5.5 server (SP4). These mailboxes were deleted several weeks ago, but they still appear in the Mailbox Resources section of Exchange Admin. They appear as empty mailboxes, there aren't any messages contained within them.

The only real problem that they present us is that they are causing our individual mailbox backup to fail, because the mailboxes cannot be found.

Has anybody come across this before? I haven't run ISINTEG, ESEUTIL or any offline maintenance utilities against the server yet.

Regards,

 

[ChrisHirst]

It does happen sometimes, usually a 'fix' run of isinteg will clear the problem.


Chris.

 

[Tobinsk]

Thanks, Chris.

Just one more question: do you know which options I should run ISINTEG with? There seems to be a lot of them (mailbox, folder, message, etc).

Thanks again!

 

[ChrisHirst]

I find it is as easy to run alltests you know you have got everything then.

Chris.

 

[dlstewart6759]

This sounds similar to a problem we had. The account would show up in Mailbox Resources, but not in recipients. When you tried to open the resource, you would get an error that it was not in the directory or the directory had not replicated.

Regular maintenance didn't clear it up. We finally figured out to use the Consistancy Adjuster for the server. From there you can have it sync with the directory to create new mailboxes for the orphaned records, or delete outright.

I set it up to sync with the directory, and create a record for the mailbox. Once it created the mailbox resource completely, I could then properly delete it.

After that the brick level backups never had a problem with the orphaned mailboxes.

 

[rmamaril]

Running ISINTEG and ESEUTIL did not fix the problem. I still could not get rid of the ghost mailboxes. I tried re-creating the mailbox and then deleted it but the ghost mailbox was not deleted.

I have not tried running consistency adjuster. Any other suggestions?

 

[giomim]

Had this happen also. I do not know the exact fix (another sites Exchange Admin had the call) but it included a call to Microsoft support and doing a bit of Exchange surgery in raw mode. I will try tomorrow to get the fix and post it.

 

[dmandell]

I have a similar problem with some Public folder objects.
Microsoft Q254638 suggests using PFinfo and PFadmin.
Is there a similar tool for the Private Information Store that might help?

 

[GoranY]

I think the right solution to this 'problem' is the answer from dlstewart6759. I had the same situation and using the Consistency Adjuster it created normal local recipient that I deleted later on.

Also, I had on my server some deleted users and then custom recipients created with the same alias, so in this case:
1. Export the Global Address List (CR only)
2. Delete affected CRs,
3. Run Consistency Adjuster, only first option - Private Information Store has to be turned on,
4. Import back only the CRs needed from the list created in step 1