MTA Database curruption

[Jabulani]

My Exchange 5.5 Server with 220 users crashed this afternoon. The following messages have been logged in the Event Viewer Application log.

Verify that the Microsoft Exchange MTA service has started. Consecutive ma-open calls are failing with error 3051.

The MTA is running recovery on the internal message database because the MTA was not shut down cleanly. This operation may take some time. Status updates will be written to the Windows NT Event Log. [DB Server MAIN BASE 1 0] (14)

An MTA database server error was encountered. Error accessing object attribute (AAT) on a Read/Write operation. Filename: F:\exchsrvr\mtadata\.\DB000001.DAT. File operation: 0. Operating system error: 0. Referenced object: READ (00000000 => N/A). Referenced object error 00000000. [0 DB Server MAIN BASE 1] (14)

An MTA database server error was encountered. Failed to read attribute information (AAT) for object 02000001. Database server error code: 2127. [DB Server MAIN BASE 1 29] (14)

An MTA database server error was encountered while attempting to unlock an object which is not locked. Called from SNAP-BASE. Procedure 0. Object at fault: 02000001. [DB Server MAIN BASE 1 14] (14)

A fatal database error occurred, the database recovery operation was not successful and manual correction will be required. Details can be found in the file: F:\exchsrvr\mtadata\.\MTACHECK.OUT\MTACHECK.LOG. Please contact Microsoft Technical Support. [DB Server MAIN BASE 1 14] (16)

Can anyone say what this is about.

Thanks vary much.

 

[rws]

Don't know why, but your MTA is hosed. The last event you list is a 2152, which means some or all of your core .dat files are missing or corrupted. It is extremely difficult to recover from this without losing data (call Microsoft, and they probably won't suggest even trying). But it is easy to get back up again:
Move everything out of the mtadata directory that holds .dat files, if you have the mta on 2 drives. If it's all on one, just move out the .dat files.
On the exchange CD, find the bootenv directory. This will contain .dat files (the complete mta is in mtadata, but you don't need that). Copy the files into mtadata on the server. Select all, go to properties, remove Read Only attribute.
Command prompt, exchsrvr\bin: mtacheck /v. Run this twice. Your mta should start.
If you replace the whole mta from mtadata on the CD, you will have to reapply service pack, this way that is not necessary.
Anything that was in your mta at the time will be lost. But if you have hundreds of .dat files, that doesn't necessarily mean you lost hundreds of messages. Exchange will leave .dat files there for later use.