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I am responsible for a Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 serving e-mail via Exchange to a small company.

Yesterday, it appears everything was working fine. This morning, one account (the one that is used most intensively, of course) started to act "weird":

  • In Outlook 2010, no new e-mails appear in the Inbox. E-Mails that are (via automatic rules) being delivered to subfolders of Inbox, however, appear fine. Outlook says "all folders are up to date".

  • On iOS devices, it's pretty much the same picture: Subfolders of Inbox work fine, Inbox itself does not update. However, it appears that the process to fetch new e-mails in Inbox takes a long time and eventually says "the connection to the server failed".

  • Outlook Web Access, however, shows all e-mails (in the Inbox as well as in subfolders of Inbox)

While testing, I logged into this account from a computer that has never been logged in before, and started Outlook. It downloaded the content of all folders in a way that appears correct, except Inbox which appears totally empty. Subfolders of Inbox, again, work fine.

Sending e-mail appears to work fine.

All other accounts on the same server appear to work fine.

The event log on the server shows lots of those errors:

Source: Server ActiveSync Type: Error Event ID: 3005

Unexpected Exchange mailbox Server error: Server: [servername] User: [affected_username] HTTP status code: [400]. Verify that the Exchange maibox Server is working correctly.

The web server log shows the offending requests are

SEARCH /exchange-oma/[affected_username]/

and that indeed a status code of 400 is returned

The folder size of Inbox (without subfolders), as shown from the "folder properties", on the server, is shown as 5'669'022 kB.

Is it possible that this is "too big to handle", and all of the symptoms I'm seeing are a result of this?

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  • Two things to try: 1. Connect using Outlook not in cached mode. If everything appears normally then the problem is with cached mode and the OST file. 2. If step 1 doesn't work then try clearing any views the user may have created in their mailbox. You can do this by launcing Outlook from Run like this: outlook.exe /cleanviews.
    – joeqwerty
    Nov 27, 2012 at 18:11
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    You also need to kick someone in their fun bits for having a 5.7 GB inbox. Actually, I think that would be step #1 for me. "Oh you're having problems with your 5.7 GB inbox? ... That's great, come see me again when you have a less moronic problem, please." Nov 27, 2012 at 18:29
  • Thank you very much :-) I've moved some mails out of the Inbox, but this has not changed anything visible yet. Deactivating the cached mode makes it actually work, but veeeery slooooowly with loooong waits in "getting data from Exchange". We'll work with that while we move more stuff out of the huge Inbox, while still looking for other possible ways of improving the situation.
    – ftc
    Nov 28, 2012 at 7:59
  • Current state: I moved three years worth of e-mails out of the Inbox and preformed a full database defragmentation using "eseutil /d". OWA and Outlook in non-cached mode is much snappier now and works well, Outlook in (standard) cached mode as well as iOS is still a no-go, Errors with ID 3005 are still showing up in the Event log. Now hunting for something to get a full dump of those http requests, to see what exactly the 400 error is saying.
    – ftc
    Nov 29, 2012 at 8:39
  • Current state: Apparently access via IMAP works, so reconfigured the iOS devices to use that. Still no clue about the true nature of the 400 errors, since there appears to be no software that can dump TCP packets from a Windows 2003 machine to itself.
    – ftc
    Nov 30, 2012 at 11:54

1 Answer 1

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So, there was not really a "simple" solution. The exact details stay unresolved.

What we did, was setting up a new Exchange 2010 Server on a new machine (and, for good measure, an additional domain controller on yet another new machine), and then move the mailboxes from the Small Business Server to the Exchange 2010.

When we got to the problematic mailbox, it refused to move with the following message:

07.01.2013 19:01:07 [exchange-2010] Initializing folder hierarchy in mailbox 'Primary (76582dc1-1a82-428e-bd05-e1276800e425)': 105 folders total.
07.01.2013 19:01:17 [exchange-2010] Fatal error MapiExceptionPartialCompletion has occurred.
Error details: MapiExceptionPartialCompletion: Unable to copy to target. (hr=0x40680, ec=0)

   at Microsoft.Mapi.MapiExceptionHelper.ThrowIfErrorOrWarning(String message, Int32 hresult, Boolean allowWarnings, SafeExInterfaceHandle iUnknown, Exception innerException)
   at Microsoft.Mapi.MapiUnk.ThrowIfErrorOrWarning(String message, Int32 hr)
   at Microsoft.Mapi.MapiProp.CopyTo(MapiProp destProp, Boolean reportProgress, CopyPropertiesFlags copyPropertiesFlags, Boolean copySubObjects, ICollection`1 excludeTags)
   at Microsoft.Mapi.MapiProp.ExportObjectHelper(IMapiFxProxy dest, PropTag[] tags, CopyPropertiesFlags copyPropertiesFlags, Boolean useCopyProps)
   at Microsoft.Mapi.MapiProp.ExportObject(IMapiFxProxy fxProxy, CopyPropertiesFlags copyPropertiesFlags, PropTag[] excludeTags)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.LocalSourceFolder.Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.ISourceFolder.CopyTo(IFxProxy destFolderProxy, PropTag[] excludeTags)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.SourceFolderWrapper.<>c__DisplayClass1.<Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.ISourceFolder.CopyTo>b__0()
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.ExecutionContext.Execute(GenericCallDelegate operation)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.SourceFolderWrapper.Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.ISourceFolder.CopyTo(IFxProxy destFolder, PropTag[] excludeTags)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.MailboxCopierBase.CopyFolderProperties(FolderRecWrapper folderRec, ISourceFolder sourceFolder, IDestinationFolder destFolder, FolderRecDataFlags dataToCopy)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.MoveBaseJob.<>c__DisplayClass36.<>c__DisplayClass38.<CreateFolderHierarchy>b__31()
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.ExecutionContext.Execute(GenericCallDelegate operation)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.MoveBaseJob.<>c__DisplayClass36.<CreateFolderHierarchy>b__30(FolderRecWrapper folderRec, EnumFolderContext context)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.FolderMap.EnumSingleFolder(FolderRecWrapper folderRec, EnumFolderContext ctx, EnumFolderCallback callback, EnumHierarchyFlags flags)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.FolderMap.EnumSingleFolder(FolderRecWrapper folderRec, EnumFolderContext ctx, EnumFolderCallback callback, EnumHierarchyFlags flags)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.FolderMap.EnumSingleFolder(FolderRecWrapper folderRec, EnumFolderContext ctx, EnumFolderCallback callback, EnumHierarchyFlags flags)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.MoveBaseJob.<CreateFolderHierarchy>b__2f(MailboxMover mbxCtx)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.MoveBaseJob.ForeachMailboxContext(MailboxMoverDelegate del)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.MoveBaseJob.CreateFolderHierarchy(Object[] wiParams)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.CommonUtils.CatchKnownExceptions(GenericCallDelegate del, FailureDelegate failureDelegate)
Error context: --------
Operation: ISourceFolder.CopyTo
OperationSide: Source
Primary (76582dc1-1a82-428e-bd05-e1276800e425)
PropTags: [ContainerContents; FolderAssociatedContents; ContainerHierarchy; RulesTable; 1071710466]
--------
Folder: '/Top of Information Store/Inbox', entryId [len=46, data=00000000B55449F4D13FC54AAA4A5936050753AE01005896698ABF45814BA7D90A6A0EA2FEAF00000000329A0000], parentId [len=46, data=00000000B55449F4D13FC54AAA4A5936050753AE01005896698ABF45814BA7D90A6A0EA2FEAF0000000032970000]
07.01.2013 19:01:18 [exchange-2010] Removing target mailbox 'Primary (76582dc1-1a82-428e-bd05-e1276800e425)' due to an offline move failure.
07.01.2013 19:01:18 [exchange-2010] Relinquishing job.

We took this as the final evidence that there is really something very wrong with that mailbox. So we deleted it on the old server, created a new one, and are now copying back all the needed mails, calendar entries, contacts, notes and todo items from Outlook.

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