Question : Administrator mailbox - can't open it or move it

Hi,

We recently lost one of our Exchange 2000 servers from AD (it was removed from System Manager by mistake) and as well as losing all the public folders we lost the administrator mailbox that was still on it.

Now we can't get into the Admin mailbox because it is pointing to the server that doesn't exist.  It won't let me move the mailbox or delete and recreate it.  I obviously cannot delete and recreate the Admin account.

How can I get access to this mailbox or force AD (we are a native 2000 domain) to recreate the mailbox on our one remaining Exchange 2000 server?

Any ideas please?

Thank you.

Answer : Administrator mailbox - can't open it or move it

Ok

I don't know of any way you can get your exchange server back up and running as it was - you're going to have to reinstall exchange, as a new server. All of the old exchange configuration was in AD, but when the server was deleted, this configuration has been lost.

I've hunted around for this info, and can't find it anywhere. You may be able to magically recreate all the settings you need to using ADSIEdit, but it'll probably take longer and be more prone to errors, than if you just cut your losses and reinstall the server, as a new exchange server in your exchange org.

Before you take this drastic step, you should try and get the info out of the mailboxes (since you still have the edb and stm files) by following the disaster recovery steps above - I suggest you copy the database and logs to another server (your file server) and then do the following:

- install windows 2000 in a new forest
- install exchange 2000 with the same org name

and instead of restoring your databases from a backup, copy the edb stm and log files into the relevant locations, and start the information store again.

This will probably throw up some errors, and you'll need to use isinteg to fix these problems. Troubleshooting database startup is in the disaster recovery document.

Once you have all the information in PST files, you should reinstall exchange, get it back into your exchange org, recreate the mailboxes, and import the PSTs.

If you're having problem re-installing exchange, see if any of these articles help:

How to manually remove a single exchange exchange-based server from AD Q278918
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;278918

This article also has instructions on how to manually remove an Exchange 2000 installation - you may need to do this, before Exchange setup will complete successfully.

Microsoft may have some better ideas - you should consider opening a paid support request.

--Tosh