Question : How long is mail kept in the Exchange 2003 local delivery queue?

How long are messages kept in the Exchange 2003 local delivery queue? We are experiencing a problem with one of our mailstores and due to that lots of messages are stuck in the local delivery queue until the affected store comes back online. When I looked last time I noticed that some messages were gone from the queue and it seems that the later I check the more messages are gone from the queue. At this rate it looks like we will loose more and more messages until the corrupt store finally is restored.

How come the messages in the queue seem to disappear after time? Are they moved to a different queue? How can we stop the queue from 'emptying' itself?

Answer : How long is mail kept in the Exchange 2003 local delivery queue?

Turn the hours up on the SMTP virtual server and then restart the SMTP Server service. 48 hours is the default setting.

Simon.