New user doesn't get an e-mail address for some reason. 3

[esmithbda]

We have a new user in our office as of today (a temp). In Active Directory on the Exchange 2003 machine, I copied our most recent temp's user and created our new user from that. I then deleted the previous temp.
I setup the new user with her info and then went to log her into her machine - Outlook loaded up and then said that it couldn't find her username on the server (no mailbox).

I doublechcked that I had spelled/typed it correctly and it was. I even went in, killed her mailbox via Active Directory -> Exchange Tasks and created a new one. Still no luck.

I looked in her Active Directory profile and saw that under e-mail addresses, she had nothing. Previously, when creating users, it would automatically create the e-mail info when we setup the user and their mailbox...

I have tried searching and have phoned our other IT guy and both of us are stumped on this.

Any ideas?

 

[FilthPig]

In Exchange System Manager expand your organization, Recipients, Recipient update service. Right-click on your RUS for your domain and rebuild it.

Marc Creviere

 

[esmithbda]

There are two RUS there, and I rebuilt both - it says that the changes are done "at the next update interval".

Our update interval is set (for both) at "Always" - so I guess I don't need to wait on that.

We have a small office, so there isn't a lot for it to churn though and neither the PDC nor the mailserver are showing any major load (outside of anything normal).

So would it be safe to assume that it ran?

If so, then it apparently didn't resolve the issue, since the user still has no e-mail addresses showing up under the "e-mail addresses" tab in their Active Directory profile.
"Automatically update addresses based on the recipient policy" is checked for that user on that tab.
And under the default (and only) recipient policy it shows the e-mail configuration that all of the other users show.

Not sure what is causing this - the most recent change (prior to this was the last time we added a new user to the AD) was that the PDC was upgraded to Windows Server 2003 from Server 2000.

 

[FilthPig]

Now run an update now.

Marc Creviere

 

[esmithbda]

Assuming you mean an update on the RUS - I did that on both of them and still no luck.
(I hadn't looked in that folder before, or at least not in a long time - year or so - so I don't recall if we always had two - but one has our domain name after it, and one has "enterprise configuration" next to it - they are both the same in all other respects... not sure if that matters - I have been rebuilding/updating both as you suggest)

Going into that user's AD profile, the e-mail addresses tab still shows no addresses and she doesn't show up for Outlook either.

 

[FilthPig]

If you look on that exchange server's mailbox store do you see a mailbox for this user?

Any errors in your event viewers on the exchange machine or domain controllers?

Marc Creviere

 

[mjpolito]

Trying going to another workstation & sending an email to this new user.

I think a new account needs to be initialized this way before a mailbox is truly created for them.

Mike

 

[esmithbda]

ahh, good point.
Looking at her AD profile, under "Exchange General" it claims that she has a mailbox at "MAILSERVER/First Storage Group/Mailbox Store (MAILSERVER)", but then if I go in on the server and look in its first storage group and then into the mailboxes - no luck - that user doesn't have anything.

I have even gone so far in the past to right click on the user in AD and do Excahnge Tasks and delete the mailbox that it thinks it has, and then go back in and create one.

This seems to be the issue, but now I have no clue what is causing it.

 

[esmithbda]

Our IT consultant also noted that I should try sending her an e-mail to initialize the account - but I have never had to do this in the past.

I tried it, and she doesn't show up in the addresses in our Outlook, but I just put the address to our domain anyway and then sent it.

Got a message back from the system attendant saying that there is no such user.

 

[esmithbda]

Lots of Group Policy errors in the event log on the PDC.

Gonna need to check that out later - company party just came up

 

[FilthPig]

Maybe you should kick off a cleanup agent on the mailbox store. Expand System Manager to the 'Mailboxes' underneath your mailbox store. Right-click on it and 'Run Cleanup Agent'.

Marc Creviere

 

[houttum]

How about trying to create a new account with a mailbox and seeing whether all goes well?

Steven

 

[xmsre]

The RUS is responsible for processing recipient policies and stamping addresses. The two most common reason the RUS fails are invalid endpoints and missing address generation dlls.

You should first verify the endpoints. You have at least two RUS'; the enterprise RUS and a RUS for each domain. The domain RUS is the one we are concerned with here. On the properties of the RUS, make sure it points to a valid domain controller and exchange server.

After you verify the endpoints, check your application log. Many times fax software or other connectors add proxy address generation DLLs. If this dll is missing from the exchange server that the RUS is on, an event 2027, 2035, and 2037 will be logged and recipient policies will not be processed. You can fix this by simply copying the missing dll to the required location as stated in the event.

 

[esmithbda]

I ran the mailbox cleanup, nothing regarding this issue appeared to change.

I created a new user (copying the profile of my own account in this case), and had it create a mailbox with it... no mailbox showed up.
I rebuilt the RUS (both, just for good measure) and also did updates on them.
Still no mailbox for the new user attempt there.

Both RUS point at our primary domain controller.

Looking on both the mailserver and the PDC, there are no event 2027, 2035, nor 2037s.
On the PDC though, there are a ton of 1030 and 1058 (which are the group policy errors that I alluded to before).

Looking here

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;830676

shows that I should run "dfsutil /PurgeMupCache" (getting that off of the support tools from the Server 2k3 cd).
I did that - still no luck (created a new user, copying my own profile, etc - no mailbox).

So going back to this

http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=1030&eventno=1542&source=Userenv&phase=1

I can see other things to try to resolve the errors.
We don't have a mutli-homed PDC, so that suggestion is out.
The services that it says need to be started and automatic are indeed started and are automatic - and there are now FRS issues.

We did have a new network anti-virus client on the PDC installed recently by our IT guy (around when we were having the problems - so I went in and excluded the sysvol folders in hopes of that being the issue - the client on this machine takes up a ton of processor time anyway, so for now I have disabled it entirely to try to resolve this issue).

So far nothing I have tried has worked at resolving this issue - but the issue at first glance seems to not be with the mailserver in this case, but instead with the PDC and its inability to have permission/access to the gpt.ini file after our IT consultant came in and converted the Win 2K box to a Win 2k3 system.

Hopefully once this issue is resolved, the mailserver issue will be resolved with it.

 

[esmithbda]

It appears that I have now sorted out the Group Policy issue (after many changes, none of which appeared to stop the errors showing up in the PDC event log every 5 minutes, I finally rebooted and when it came up, threw 4 error events for it, and then hasn't thrown any since... which appears to still be broken perhaps, but isn't doing it every 5 minutes which would seem to be some sort of improvement).

That said - the mailserver issue still stands unresolved - unable to create a mailbox for a user (the process looks successful, and no errors regarding it are thrown on the mailserver event log - but then no mailbox shows up when looking in the system manager).

 

[McLarnon]

esmithbda,
I just logged on so that I could post about the exact same problem. I had tried everything that you seem to have after reading various ng's and kb articles.

Anyone got any suggestions?

 

[McLarnon]

I just found a post advising to download and install Service Pack 1 for exchange 2003 as this has been known to fix this problem. Has anyone tried this or know of any problems that have occured from this service pack?

I'm reluctant to install the service pack as in my experience I have given myself more problems from Windows updates.

Thanks

 

[esmithbda]

We are still having the problem for the most part.

Our IT consultant (I'm really more of a programmer, but I am in house, so I get the IT role if we can't get the consultant in) came in and forced the user's mailbox creation.

She now has a mailbox listed in the mailboxes, but she still doesn't show up when you write an e-mail (not in the GAL).
I just tried to log her into Outlook on her system and it can't find her username either (clearly the same issue as when I try to send e-mail to her).

I really hate installing service packs - as you say, there could be issues that I don't want to add on top of this - and even more so I hate installing them while people are in the office using this.
But this user has gone several days now without e-mail and she is starting to get quite unhappy with me (explaining to her that I have never even seen this happen before seemed to make it worse).

Someone else recommended that we install the service pack 1 here on it (more in passing than as a resolution to any of these issues).

So I guess that is what I will be doing - I'll keep you posted if it breaks anything (although in my experience anything that it breaks won't show up for a day or two).

 

[esmithbda]

Looking here (

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/MF017.html)

I saw to check the "showInAddressBook" still wasn't populated - it wasn't. I contemplated just manually forcing it in ADSI Edit, but then decided that was asking for trouble and wouldn't resolve the larger issue.

But it certainly seems like an issue of the RUS not working properly. Our RUS points to the PDC that used to be a Win2k box until it was recently rebuilt as a Win2k3 box by our IT consultant.
It seems very likely that this is the cause of the problem, even though he swears up and down that this couldn't be it - we never had this issue until that event.

Looking at this page (

http://hellomate.typepad.com/exchange/2003/07/is_your_rus_not.html),

it recommends some things to do if the RUS is bad - I am going to look into these before I install the SP1 since I would really rather do that over a weekend with much more time and no users in here.

I will keep this posted as to what I end up figuring out.

 

[McLarnon]

I downloaded the SP1, read the release notes and before installing it decided that I'm holding off for a weekend instead. (Its like Russian Roulette).

For the time being all of my users are active and not experiencing any problems, I don't have to create an additonal 18 accounts until the end of July so I have some time and I would only kick myself later if the SP1 brought down email.

Keep me posted.

Cheers.