Help!!!- Possible METABASE is corrupted 1

[PalmIdiot]

I have been having a problem with my Exchange 2000 (SP3, with post SP3 patch running). I have found a Microsoft article (

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=304166),

but the fix they suggest is pretty intense, I was wondering if anyone else has seen this problem or has any additonal suggestions. Basically when the problem occurs, I have to reboot the server to get it to fix itsself. It is a real pain in the neck. I am willing to attempt the fix Microsoft suggests, however I just wanted soem additional feedback before I move forward. Thanks

The server continues to get errors like the ones below:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7032
Description:
The Service Control Manager tried to take a corrective action (Restart the service) after the unexpected termination of the Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine service, but this action failed with the following error: An instance of the service is already running.


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Description:
The IIS Admin Service service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this X time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 1 milliseconds: Run the configured recovery program.


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Description:
The Microsoft Exchange IMAP4 service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this X time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 0 milliseconds: No action.


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Description:
The Site Server ILS Service service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this X time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 0 milliseconds: No action.


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Description:
The FTP Publishing Service service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this X time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 0 milliseconds: No action.


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Description:
The Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP) service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this X time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 0 milliseconds: No action.


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Description:
The Microsoft Exchange POP3 service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this X time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 0 milliseconds: No action.


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Description:
The Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this X time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 60000 milliseconds: Restart the service.


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Description:
The Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this X time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 0 milliseconds: No action.


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Description:
The World Wide Web Publishing Service service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this X time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 0 milliseconds: No action.

 

[Evilbart]

had this issue once, follow the Q number and your problem is solved.

but nevertheless it is a weird thing....

// Bart

 

[PalmIdiot]

Bart,

The solution they propose in teh Q number, how time consuming was it? did you run into any issues? It seems to me that it may take a while to uninstall IIS and than reinstall Exchange. Can you offer any addtional feedback. Also, when you had this problem, did it only occasionaly happen, or did this problem occur everytime you tried and mount the database? My problem only has occurred a few times at random times, usually at night. It seems so weird to me that a corrupted metabase would actually crash at night when the the database is getting the least activity. Thanks

 

[Evilbart]

I had this issue allready some time ago @ a customers site. One of their exchange servers was having this problem occasionally. First we thought this was due to the backup software (Brightstore Arcserve 2000) because this mostly happened when backup started. Also we thought nightly scan of database by antivirus could cause these errors but disabling this was also no solution. (Norton + Sybari's Antigen)
As that way gave us no solution we went the way this Q number said.
We found no reason for the random stops but after performing this all went well (checked today and this server is well alive and kicking (uptime 86days ;-)

Time issue: take a full backup (online or offline as you prefer). You know what time this takes on your systems.
Stopping exchange and disable services: 5 mins
Remove and reinstall iis: 45 mins if you re-apply service pack
reinstall exchange: 30 mins ( all the prep things are not needed because your schema has allready been updated during initial setup) + service pack another 30'
enabling services: another 5 mins
i think you need some more of two hours to perform this (if you need to re-apply servicepacks + hotfixes)

Hope this brought you some background to the situation we were in that time,

I hope this procedure will bring a solution to your problems and bring along less head-aches by people complaining always about their 24/7 mail.

all the best

// Bart

 

[PalmIdiot]

Thanks for the advice Bart.

 

[Evilbart]

no sweat ;-)

let us know if it worked fine (or not)

I'm still curious about what causes this problem...

// Bart

 

[PalmIdiot]

At the bottom of the Q there are possible casues of the issue, but none of them really should have occurred in our case except for maybe the virus scanning. But the virus scanning has been the same for the past 2 years, so it seems odd that the corruption would just occur now.

 

[Evilbart]

i know: tried to follow that lead too but it didn't help

some times servers just get broken... (mostly when i'm on holiday ;-)

// Bart

 

[PalmIdiot]

All,

I just wanted to follow up on the results the suggested Microsoft fix for the corrupted Metabase file. In general the fix seems to have worked great. The server has been up and running fine for the past 4 days. I did want to update the group on a couple issues I ran into. If you have installed the Post SP3 update, you should uninstall it prior to running the fix. After I did the upgrade I tried to reinstall all the SP's and when I tried to reinstall the post SP3 upgrade the system thought it was already installed.

Another issue I ran into was while reinstalling Exchange 2000, it got locked up on davex.exe file. I had to cancel the install and go rename the davex.exe file and re-do teh Exchange 2000 install.

Bart's suggested times are right on. Good luck to anyone else that has this problem.