Users losing emails

[BobSheridan]

We run Exchange 2000 Server (not enterprise edition) to handle our email. Recently I've had two users complain that large quantities of emails from either old folders they refused to have archived or sent items folders. (In fact one user had their whole sent items folder bar the previous days emails completely wiped.)

I do wonder if maybe we have reached the maximum capacity of the email databases (I think it's 16GB) and it's just exchange's way of preventing the whole thing just failing altogether. Can anyone shed any light on this? Any suggestions about how I can control what's happening?

 

[Marcs41]

Messages don't just run away. If the limit is reached, the service will stop, period.
There is not self-protect mechanism.

You do not spcify if messages stay on the server or not, Although, by the size of it (very bad!) it sounds they are.
Could it be Mailbox Manager is running and doing what is is told to do (delete in this case)?
If you are reaching your limit, how many users +/- are you talking about?

Marc
_{If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC!}

 

[BobSheridan]

Yes we do keep pretty much all messages on the server. This is mainly due to the very annoying user practice of keeping lots of "important" emails for a very long period of time. Persuading them that it is necessary for them to archive/tidy their mailboxes has been like arguing with a brick.

It appeared that we never had mailbox manager running, but since your reply I have implemented it at a reporting level so I've got some hard data to look at. We roughly 50 active users, and although so far nobody has lost anything important, it is worrying that they do seem to appear at random intervals.

I've checked the event log and noticed one error which I can account for and know why it happened. The error is:

An unexpected MAPI error occurred. Error returned was [0x80040154].

But I am pretty sure that this wouldn't have caused the problems I'm experiencing.

I don't think I've really given you that much to go on here, but any further help would still be appreciated.

 

[Marcs41]

50 users and you're almost full? WOW!
Time to clean, you do not want to crash that!
Use the Mailbox manager to scare them a little. You can modify the message, make it look as the server itself is complaining and insert that mail will be lost is not archived soon.
Next, if that works, they may come to you for help on archiving. If they want to keep old mail, fine, but let them keep it in an archive PST, that takes the load of your server.

The only references I found for 0x80040154 were on 5.5 but maybe if you post the full Event error we can track down more.

http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q270677

http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q270855

Marc
_{If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC!}