Exchange on small buisness server

You should run the Exchange optimizer so your files are located at optimal locations.

Also perhaps before that check under task manager if there are services which are hogging the computer resources - like big chunks of memory and/or CPU. If it is some drivers you may need to search the appropriate site for upgrades.

Another alternative is that sometimes motherboards have BIOS bugs and some programs create memory and CPU leaks - this requires a bios upgrade - try the manufacturer site. This happens with new as well as old BIOS. Ever heard of software with no bugs!

You should also have installed Exchange Service Pack 3 by now besides the NT service pack 6a.

Consider Outlook 2000 as an alternative if all fails.

Good luck

In my experience, SBS v4.0 was not a particularly great product and v4.5 brought much improved performance. Late last year, rather than fix v4.0 from a Y2K perspective, Microsoft provided an upgrade to v4.5 for just the cost of shipping. I don't know what the current status of that upgrade is, but it would probably be worth the time to find out. If it's still available, it's a smokin' deal.

Beyond that, the most bang for the buck would usually be a RAM upgrade. Depending on the number ofusers, 256meg is still a little light when you have multiple applications running (as is usually the case with SBS).

But before doing anything, I would set up a few Performance Monitor charts and see where the bottleneck really is - it could be CPU, RAM, disk or network access, or a rogue process that is sucking up all the CPU cycles (anti-virus programs are notorious for that..).

paul