HELP! Unable to see old e mail after Exchange 5.5 to 2000 Upgrade

[AlanThompson]

Hello,

We just completed an upgrade from an old server running NT4/Exchange 5.5 to a new server running 2000 Adv Server/Exchange 2000 for a small office with 30 users.

Although the folders in the users' Outlook mailboxes were replicated, all of the old mail received or sent one day or more before the migration does not display in Outlook. New mail displays just fine. The only older items that display are some leftover "Invite Attendees" messages.

The clients are running Win XP Pro; with some running Office 2000, and some running Office XP Small Business. We had to set up new user accounts on each PC because the old accounts didn't seem to want to connect. So we would disconnect from the domain, join a fictitious Workgroup, and then rejoin the domain. That would force us to create a new user account.

In many cases, we had to reinstall Office to get it to run right. It didn't seem to recognize the new user accounts. We tried to run the "Copy User Profiles" function but the original user accounts now display as "Account Unknown" in the selection box and the copy button is grayed out. The old profiles are there; I can see them when I browse the Documents and Settings folder.

There was a lot of important customer communications in the old e mail and the owner is coming unglued. Any ideas where that older e mail went, why it doesn't display, and where we went wrong???

 

[SirSick]

is the old 5.5 server still alive, if so where the users keeping there mail on the server or pulling it need more info.

 

[AlanThompson]

No. We backed up all the files, and mailboxes as .PSTs, and moved them off. Then upgraded the NT 4.0 server to W2K File server. We were thinking about restoring the NT 4/Exchange 5.5 box just to see if we could recapture the e mail.

 

[SirSick]

did you backup each mailbox or the store all at once
if you have a pst for each mailbox you can open them in outlook. if not i can only think to restore your exchange 5.5

 

[AlanThompson]

We backed them up as individual mailboxes and we can open them a in Outlook but they don't display the old mail, either. Is this a permissions issue with the new user accounts?

 

[SirSick]

if you can open them it is not a permissions issue this would seem to be a problem with the pst its self. when you open each box do you get anything? contacts, any mail?

 

[AlanThompson]

The .PSTs were missing a bunch as well. We're going to restore the old system onto another server from a backup tape and see what happened.