restore mailbox error? puzzling!

Follow the followin carefully:

How to Recover Exchange 5.5 - Troubleshoot Errors.
Exchange 5.5 Disaster Recovery White PaperBy: ***** *****Introduction:This case study is to outline the steps needed to the recovery of a Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 server w/ SP4, which resides upon a Windows NT 4.0 SP6 server and a Blackberry Enterprise Server.Materials needed during this entire installation process, and things you should know before going further.- Know the hardware in the machine that is being used for Exchange; have all the necessary drivers.- In this case, we needed 3 machines.- Exchange Restore Machine w/ Backup Exec.- PDC (Primary Domain Controller) w/ mass storage (80gigs)- BlackBerry Server on NT 4.0- Have the Microsoft Exchange 5.5 Installation Disk and all Exchange Service Pack Disks.- Have all appropriate device drivers.- Have Veritas Backup Exec 8.0 Disks.- Have Sybari Antigen Disks.Disaster Recovery Strategy:Planning is essential to a goodrecovery. The strategy listed here is one of many different strategies one can take. This is the one I have chosen for our corporation. It has been tested and has been proven successful.When recovering an Exchange 5.5 server, it is absolutely imperative that it has access to the ORIGINAL SAM from the PDC of the original Domain. That said there are three ways one can proceed to ensure that the SAM is available.1. Use an NT Service aware Backup Program like Veritas Backup Exec to backup the PDC’s Registry and SAM.2. Install a temporary BDC and use Symantec Ghost to get an image of the installation.3. Install a permanent BDC on the original domain and store it offsite.I have chosen plan 3. Ideally, make an installation of your new BDC on a laptop. Laptops are portable enough so that if there are any major corporate changes to the Account Database, the laptop can be easily brought back into the domai

For more info: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;326278&

You will need to change the LegacyDN value on your server. The above whitepaper includes step by step direction on how to determine the current value and how to change it.

Sorry - didn't notice 5.5 earlier. Have you checked this? http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/en/55/help/default.asp?url=/exchange/en/55/help/documents/server/xmt02004.htm

You can restore an information store to a Microsoft Exchange Server computer that is different from the one you backed up. This enables you to recover individual items (messages or folders) from a backup without restoring over a server that is in use. This is a last-resort method for retrieving items from individual mailboxes or public folders. It requires an additional computer that has enough hard drive disk space to restore the entire backup and that meets the hardware requirements to run a Microsoft Exchange Server computer. The alternate server cannot replicate its directory with the existing organization.

Warning If you type your production server name as the destination server name in the Restore Information dialog box, you will restore over your production server.

Set up Microsoft Exchange Server on the alternate server with the same organization and site name as the tape being restored, but do not add this server to an existing site during Setup.
Using Windows NT Backup, restore the information store, and type the alternate server namefor the destination server in the Restore Information dialog box.
Select the following check boxes.
Erase all existing data
Private
Public You must select both Private and Public, even if the backup contains only one of these databases.
Start the services on the alternate server. This can be done automatically by selecting Start Service after Restore in step 2.
In the Administrator window, locate the DS/IS consistency adjustment in the Advanced property page of the server object. Choose All Inconsistencies, and then choose Adjust.

If I were you I will install Exchange with same service pack etc. Restore both Exchange Directory Services and Information Store form a full backup. Then install Outlook to generate a 'pst' containing info about user's mailbox. Burn onto CD or transfer to a network point and import 'pst' into user's mailbox. I did it last Friday and it took 2 hours to get the job done. The danger of copying just the database is that you do not know what state the ‘priv.edb’ or ‘pub.edb’ was in before you copy. Why trouble yourself with ISINTEG when you can go one extra mile to finish off cleanly. Remember full backup, full restore, start services, install Outlook, generate ‘pst’ and import ‘pst’ into user’s mailbox. Simple and short. ISINTEG remember that it is used after a restore from an offline backup.

There is a utility that recovers mailboxes from offline priv.edb or pub.edb. So just restore the priv.edb (no exchange needed) it creates a .pst file from the mailbox!
Send me a mail, and I'll explain more...

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