Windows 2003/2008 mixed AD environment with Exchange 2010 single server all roles.

The administrator was “trying” to fix an issue with logging in on some specialized third party software – it wouldn’t accept modified AD logins but would work if you deleted the user and recreated the same user. Unfortunately this led to a removal of the mailboxes as well.

Checked under Recipient Configuration to Disconnected Mailbox. Unfortunately it was only showing a much-older deleted user in there – none of the newly deleted/recreated users were listed.

clean-mailbox -identity "mailbox name"

Or this should also work piping them together:
get-mailbox | clean-mailbox

Then refresh your Disconnected Mailboxen – works like a charm.
I should really create categories for Exchange 2000/2003 and then 2007/2010, no?

I was having some problems getting SQL express management studio tools to load. I needed to allow remote access to the database – I had already started the SQL agent service, so here was the next step.

Unfortunately I was getting an error:
The following error has occurred:
Another version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 has been detected on this system that must be updated to SP1. Please update all Visual Studio 2008 installations to SP1 level, by visiting Microsoft Update.

Microsoft Update did nothing for my needs. Apparently citrix installs some libraries (C++) for visual studio 2008 and they need to be updated. So you can either uninstall citrix and install the express management studio first, or you can:
Open the Registry on XenApp machine using Start > Run > Regedit
Browse for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\DevDiv\VS
Rename this key to VS_1 or something similar
Install the SQL database and management tools
Rename the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\DevDiv\VS_1 to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\DevDiv\VS
Reboot.
Go to Start > All programs > Microsoft SQL Server 2008 > SQL Server Management Studio and connect to your database instance as shown below

I also had this issue:
The tools were not in the list of items to be installed
1. Download and run the SSME installer from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=08e52ac2-1d62-45f6-9a4a-4b76a8564a2b&displaylang=en
2. Click Installation on the left side of the the wizard.
3. Select “New SQL Server stand-alone installation or add features to an existing installation”. Click OK.
4. On the Setup Support Files page, select Install.
5. On the Setup Support Rules page, click Next (the Windows Firewall warning is ok).
6. On the Installation Type page of the wizard, select “Perform a new installation of SQL Server 2008”, then click Next. (I realize that this is counter-intuitive, but if you select “Add features to an existing instance of SQL Server 2008”, you will be met with a greyed out pre-selected option to install the SQL Client Connectivity SDK, and you will not even see an option to install “Management Tools – Basic”.) You will see that SQLEXPRESS is recognized as an installed instance.
7. The Product Key screen is all greyed out with the “Specify a free edition” selected. Click Next.
8. Agree to the License Terms as usual. Click Next.
9. On the Feature Selection page, you will FINALLY have a blank checkbox next to “Management Tools – Basic”. Put a check in that box. SQL Client Connectivity SDK is selected and greyed out by default; so is the install location. Click Next.
10. Click Next on the Disk Space Requirements screen.
11. Check both boxes to send error info to Microsoft if you wish. I usually do so that they can make the product better. 🙂 Click Next.
12. Click Next on Installation Rules page if your system passed.
13. Click Install on the Ready to Install page.
14. Hopefully you will see a “Management Tools – Basic Success” message on the Installation Progress page of the wizard. Click Next.
15. You should see a “Your SQL Server 2008 installation completed successfully” message on the Complete page. Click Close.

Clean up later

Customer had an exchange 2003 box running on a virtual VMWare ESXi infrastructure. After a reboot the store would not mount. Another technician had been checking it out so I came into the game a little late.

After trying various methods to fix the issue, the technician was able to mount the store. Unfortunately there were no mailboxes listed on the store – bad news bears.

The problem was escalated to me and I ran a checkdisk on their drive
chkdsk /r E:
This checkdisk found a few sector corruptions on the primary EDB database file and fixed them. It also found a few miscellaneous table errors and filename issues – which it fixed – but nothing really major besides the EDB file.

Restarted the server and all services came back up. Unfortunately, while mail started to actually flow, I was receiving other eventlog errors:

ESE Database Page Cache – event ID 474. Information Store First Storage Group: The database page read from (file) at offset (offset) failed verification due to a page checksum mismatch. The read operation will fail with error -1018 (0xfffffc06).

Awesome.
Then I got this gem:

MSExchangeIS Mailbox – event ID 1025. An error occurred on database “First Storage Group\Mailbox Store (servername)”. Function name or description of problem: SLINK::EcUpdate Error: Read verification error

Better, no?
Basically it looks like some data corruption had occurred. Now I needed to fix this and get it back up and running ASAP.
Open a command prompt
cd \program files\exchsrvr\bin
eseutil /g "path\to\mdbdata\priv1.edb"
This will check database integrity

/D will defrag mode
/P will repair mode
/C will restore mode
/R will recover mode
/M will file dump mode
/K will checksum check mode
/Y will copy file mode

***EDIT***
Well, looks like I have to do the /R to repair as it came back saying the database was corrupted. /R should only be used if you get a similar message as it attempts to reorganize the database instead of rebuilding from the log files.

I was checking out the recent upgrade to 2010 from 2003 and I noticed the following in the eventlog:

Sender Information: System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment+HostingManager/42194754
Exception: System.ServiceModel.ServiceActivationException: The service ‘/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml’ cannot be activated due to an exception during compilation. The exception message is: Could not find a base address that matches scheme http for the endpoint with binding CustomBinding. Registered base address schemes are [https].. —> System.InvalidOperationException: Could not find a base address that matches scheme http for the endpoint with binding CustomBinding. Registered base address schemes are [https].

This was popping up mostly when someone was logging into OWA for the webmail access, but it also showed up a slightly different way when someone would try to reserve resources (rooms) for meetings.

And here’s the easy fix for me:

remove IIS binding http 80 127.0.0.1
remove IIS binding https 443 127.0.0.1

This might not apply to you, but just make sure you only have ONE binding for each port (80 and 443) and the best practice is to have it bind to any (*)

New place I work recently upgraded from a 2-server Exchange 2003 (1FE and 1BE) to a 4-server Exchange 2010 (CAS and Mailbox, Mailbox, Hub, Edge) environment. Unfortunately some of the upgrade didn’t go quite as planned and there were quite a few issues remaining.

One such issue was when a user would log into OWA (Outlook Web App – or as I still like to call it Outlook Web Access) and attempt to open up the Out Of Office area, they would receive a permission denied. This means the user cannot view the ECP (exchange control panel) area of OWA.

Problem I found: Users did not have a role policy assigned to them.
Shows the role assignment – should show “Default Role Assignment Policy”
get-mailbox MAILBOXNAME | select-object roleassignmentpolicy

If nothing shows, you must set the default policy:
get-mailbox MAILBOXNAME | set-mailbox -roleassignmentpolicy "Default Role Assignment Policy"

shows the current membership roles – should show MyBaseOptions
get-managementroleassignment -roleassignee MAILBOXNAME | fl role

If nothing shows, you must add the base options:
add-rolegroupmember 'MyBaseOptions' -Member MAILBOXNAME

ALL USERS IN DOMAIN – just remove the mailbox name:
get-mailbox | ft name,roleassignmentpolicy
get-mailbox | set-mailbox -roleassignmenpolicy "Default Role Assignment Policy"

Tired of looking this up the one time a year I use it:

Open a command prompt with administrative permissions on the domain/workgroup
query session /server:SERVERNAMEORIPHERE
reset session SESSIONIDHERE /server:SERVERNAMEORIPHERE

So in my case it was:
reset session 4 /server:testdc