OWA "HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error" opening mail

[thatguy1981]

I have an Exchange 2000 server which also runs IIS, it was working fine until recently but now users cannot read their mail through Outlook Web Access. They are able to log in fine and see their folders, but cannot open any emails, they just get a blank page with "HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error" displayed. There is also no event log entries relating to this.

Mail works fine for them through normal Outlook.

It may be worth noting that the Exchange Information store recently reached its maximum, where I performed an offline defragmentation and got it going again.

Any help would be really appreciated

 

[Peping]

What Service Pack is installed on your Exchange 2000? Are you users using earlier version of Internet Explorer?

Peping

 

[thatguy1981]

Exchange is running service pack 3, all users are using IE6 on XP or Win2000 machines

 

[M0ng00s3]

Oddly enough this started happening to me about the same time you posted, I also get an even 9126 in MSexchangeSA. I am also getting several messages backing up in my mail queue with a handle is invalid error in the properties.

 

[M0ng00s3]

After some fiddling I was able to get exchange and OWA to play nice again. Somewhere somehow it seems my TMP directory lost permission rights for the System group.

After throwing my hands up searching for the above problems I rebooted and was unable to mount the PRIV or PUB stores and thusly ran accross this:

Ref MSKB q307242

Resetting the permissions on the appropriate TMP folder seems to have cured the other problems I was having.

 

[thatguy1981]

Thanks for the help, I managed to fix the problem. It appears that the IS was reporting that it was full, even though it wasn't. This is because the priv and pub files don't actually decrease in size until an offline defrag is performed using eseutil. I dismounted the Information Store and performed the offline defrag (again - I think the users filled it after the last time before they cleaned up their email), which reduced the IS to 10Gb. From here the queues disappeared and the warning messages stopped. This also fixed Outlook Web Access and all is fine since.