First up, we don't change staff or accounts much where I work, so this problem may have started any time in the last 3 or 4 months.
We're running an AD domain using Server 2003R2 and Exchange 2003. The Exchange server is also a DC and a GC server.
Yesterday I create 3 new AD accounts, complete with mailboxes. Or so I thought. When I tried to send test messages to those accounts I discovered that the mailboxes were not created at all.
Using ADSIedit to compare one of the new accounts to an existing one I found that the msExchUserAccountControl setting was "". Setting that value to 0, as the existing account has, resulted in the corresponding mailbox being created. The only other settings that I could see which were not set in the new accounts but set in the existing one related to the address books. I expected those to be updated automatically. However, The GAL is not updating either and attempting to enter those address book settings directly with ADSIedit resulted in a "User not found".
Perhaps coincidentally, although I suspect not, starting yesterday using Message Tracking Center on my XP workstation is now ending with an "Access denied" error, ID 80070005. There is nothing in the event logs on either workstation or server to shed any light on this. The Message Tracking Center on the server works just fine with the same user logon account. All this leads me to suspect something security related is broken, but what?
Googling has turned up very little. The only entries I could find with similar descriptions all related to moving mailboxes between versions. We have never moved a mailbox and this is in fact the company's first and only Exchange server.
Right now we can use those new accounts with OWA but cannot use them with Outlook (2002/XP, sorry to say) as the names will not resolve because they are not in the address book. Any suggestions I can check out before resorting to a full server rebuild?