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Corrupted Priv.edb - Exchange 5.5 SP4

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7 replies

by larcat 2 views

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I have an inconsistant Priv.edb database using Exchange 5.5 SP4 sitting on a NT server with SP6a. The MS Exchange services will not start except for MS Exchange System Attendant. I have tried ESEUTIL and ISINTEG with many switches but the priv.edb keeps coming back with inconsistencies. Exchange server is down and has been this way for over a week. I built a new server to take the place of this old server but the old email is trapped inside this database. I would like to give people their old email messages, contacts and calendars. My backups have failed and I had Circular Logging turned on.

Any help would be great. I am running out of ideas but I have not given up YET.

Thanks,
Larry

7 replies

by mckaytech

What specific error messages are you getting when the Information Store fails to start?

paul

by larcat

IS and all other Exchange Services = error 1068 The dependency service or group failed to start.

Net Logon = Could not start the Net Logon Service on //zeus-old. error 0005: Access is denied.

by mckaytech

Thanks for the additional information. From this error message, your immediate problem is not with Exchange, it's with NT. The Net Logon service has to start before the Information Store will start.

The "access denied" part is curious because the Net Logon service normally runs under the System Account so if it's not starting, I would venture a guess that your SAM on this server got hosed.

Overall, the best approach would be to get good backups of Exchange (both on-line and off-line), re-install the OS and Exchange, then restore the Exchange databases. Using this approach, you should be able to recover all the contents of the mailboxes using ExMerge and then transfer them back to the production server.

If you're not able to getgood backups, you can do a parallel install of NT, re-install Exchange on that partition and then probably get access to the mailboxes that way (same procedure as above from that point on).

regards!

paul

by larcat

Paul:
I built a new NT 4 server and installed Exchange 5.5 to it. I copied the databases from the old server to the new server. I could not start the IS. The tests kept saying the priv.edb was inconsistent. My Exchange backup really sucks and is unreliable for the time being.
Do you know if I can possibly restore the "SAM" from my backup if it is there? I did back up the entire server.
Do you think because I had Circular Logging turned on and I wasn't backing up Exchange properly that this may be some of my problem when I placed the EDB's on a new server and it did fire up either?
Thanks,
Larry

by mckaytech

I think I'm starting to develop a theory. When you transferred the databases to the new server, did you transfer all of them (priv.edb, pub.edb, dir.edb and xdir.edb). If you did, that would explain the inconsistency.

When you're transferring databases to a newly built server, you don't restore the dir.edb or xdir.edb because they are built with reference to the underlying security IDs.

As far as circular logging, that only affects what happens to the transaction logs after the information in them is written to the database. If your backups were not working properly, enabling circular logging was really the only choice you had or you would soon run out of space on your logging drive.

We may be able to develop some options for you. If you would like, you can write off-the-forum and I'll provide all the help I can.

paul

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