Resolving Exchange Sever Error -338 (JET_errBadParentPageLink, Database corrupted)

Microsoft Exchange Server, no doubt, is one of the best email server applications. It is a transaction based messaging tool and provides better security system against important data loss. Despite of powerful data security, Exchange database files still become damaged and corrupted due to various reasons. The most common causes of corruption are Dirty shutdown, hardware failure, database file oversize issues, virus attack, human errors and due to application bugs. Such paradigms directly affect the Information Store databases ( Priv.edb and Pub.edb). Well, such kind of problematic situations can be tackled easily through the use of an updated backup or some advance third party Exchange recovery software if the built-in utilities fail. Let us do a general talk on a problematic situation which is faced by Exchange server administrator at an attempt to check the database integrity by executing the inbuilt eseutil commands. Error messages appear to be like this:

Antidote for Exchange Server Error 8197

Microsoft Exchange Servers are deployed in establishments in copious numbers across the globe. One of the trusted solutions for handling business emails, MS Exchange Servers are the backbone of enterprises that manage vital emails and act as a repository for user mailbox and its data.

Exchange Servers succumb to corruption on the grounds of virus attack, software or hardware malfunction, abnormal termination of the Information Store Service, dirty shutdown due to power failure etc. These multifarious reasons play a major role in the corruption of Exchange Server database file (EDB).

A common error message encountered by the Exchange Server users is:

“Event Type: Error
Event Source: MSExchangeFBPublish
Event Category: General
Event ID: 8197
Date: MM/DD/YY
Time: XX:XX:XX AM
User: N/A
Computer: Server Name
Description:
Error initializing session for virtual machine Server Name. The error number is 0x80040111. Make sure Microsoft Exchange Store is running. Also, make sure that there is a valid public folder database on the Exchange server.”

The aforementioned error message appears in the application log every 25 minutes irking the Exchange User time and again by hampering his work. This error message appears due to the unbinding of the Global Catalog Server by the background tasks of the free/busy folder to process updates. The free/busy task in Exchange Server deploys Windows's Operating System's referral mechanism to locate the Global Catalog Servers, contrary to the other tasks that rely on DSACCESS mechanism. These two processes have different algorithms that results in the occurence of the Exchange Event ID 8197.

To resolve this error, find out the Global Catalog Server that is not binding here:

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\ExchangeAdmin

The registry key should be different from this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Exchange Provider\DS

By using the general connectivity troubleshooting steps for the Global Catalog Server that is unbinding, the above problem can be resolved. For more detail information about this error, you may see: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2005/07/29/408394.aspx

However, if the above problem still persists, you may use a dexterous third party tool.

A trusted tool for Exchange Server repair is “Stellar Phoenix Mailbox Exchange Server Recovery”. This software supports MS Exchange Server 5.5, 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2010. Offering a clear preview of the recoverable EDB file components, this .edb repair software can be tested for its competency in the demo version. A step by step, easy to understand user guide comes with the software. This powerful tool uses extensive mechanism to perform effective recovery of vital data in cases of severe EDB file corruption. This utility also facilitates selective recovery.

How to solve Exchange Event 9175 ?

Exchange Mailbox Store is a very important component of the server and essential to proper functioning of an Exchange server. Each Exchange mailbox store is constituted of two important files named Priv.edb and Priv.stm. The EDB file is an ESE database file and also known as MAPI based database. It stores all MAPI messages, e-mail attachments and other important data. The STM file, known as streaming file, is also an ESE database file and stores primal internet content. When Microsoft Exchange Server is started, ESE determines the state of database whether it is in Consistent or Inconsistent. If ESE finds any inconsistency in Exchange database, it performs soft recovery. However, when a severe corruption occurs in a mailbox store, you will no longer be able to work with Exchange database smoothly and when you attempt to mount the database, you may get some error messages.

For example, consider a scenario wherein you are using Exchange server 2000 or 2003 and you encounter some corruption problem in your database. When you try to mount the Exchange mailbox store, you may receive the below event log description mentioned in the application event log:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: MSExchangeSA
Event Category: MAPI Session
Event ID: 9175
Date: 7/9/2001
Time: 5:32:11 PM
User: N/A
Computer: XYZ
Description:
The MAPI call 'OpenMsgStore' failed with the following error:
The Microsoft Exchange Server computer is not available. Either there are network problems or the Microsoft Exchange Server computer is down for maintenance. The MAPI provider failed.
Microsoft Exchange Server Information Store
ID no: 8004011d-0526-00000000

Causes:

Some of the reasons for the occurrence of above event are:

• Most of the time this event occurs if an Exchange Mailbox store failed to mount.
• System Attendant (SA) is attempting to make an Offline Address Book (OAB).
• Information Systems store services are stopped.
• Corruption in Exchange Mailbox store.

Solution:

You can try the following solution:

• Check whether Exchange Information Store service is running or not. If the Information store is not running, try to start it.
  

• If the Information store is working and the event is still logged. Confirm that the default Exchange mailbox store is mounted. If it is not mounted, try to mount it.
• If the Information Store is corrupt, you will need run built-in ESEUTIL/P command line utility.

If the above said repair utility fails to repair the corrupted Information Store, then you'll have to use a third-party Exchange recovery application to repair the damaged Exchange Information Store.

Such third party Exchange Server Recovery software are specifically developed to recover data from logically or physically damaged Exchange database (EDB) file. The repaired and recovered edb file can be saved at default or user's specified location.

How to resolve Exchange server error “The database files in this storage are inconsistent” ?

Microsoft Exchange Server is a communication application which is widely used by many small to large organization. This server-side application provides complete network sharing and effective management of both email-clients and its individual users. The Exchange Server application stores all the data like emails, attachments, contacts, notes, calendar entries, sent items etc. in an information store database file that is known as .edb file. Sometimes, you fail to mount the Microsoft Exchange database because of corruption or any other reason and get some undesirable error messages. 
 

The causes which lead to database file corruption and other damages are file's header corruption, human errors, virus attack, hardware error, power outage and more. Due to the corruption in Exchange database file, the users of MS Outlook fail to access their emails and other items. In such situation, you should try to find the reason of corruption and take appropriate action to repair the damage Exchange Server. However, if you are not able to do this, then you can use a third-party Exchange Server recovery solution to repair and recover data from corrupt EDB file.

Consider a scenario wherein you are using Exchange server 2000, then you try to mount the Information Store database file in Exchange Server but are unable to do so and an error message appeared, which says:

“The database files in this storage are inconsistent
Id no: c1041739”
In addition, every time when you attempt to mount a database, you will find the following error entries in the application log:
“Event Type: Error
Event Source: ESE98
Event Category: Logging/Recovery
Event ID: 465
Date: Date
Time: Time
User: N/A
Computer: Computer_Name
Description: Information Store (2224) C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\mdbdata\E00.log. Corruption was detected during soft recovery in logfile 4092:203. The failing checksum record is located at position 4117. Data not matching the log-file fill pattern first appeared in sector %6. This logfile has been damaged and is unusable.”
And
Event Type: Error
Event Source: ESE98
Event Category: Logging/Recovery
Event ID: 477
Date: Date
Time: Time
User: N/A
Computer: Computer_Name
Description: Information Store (2224) C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\mdbdata\E00.log. The log range read from the file "2095104 (0x00000000001ff800)" at offset 12800 (0x00003200) for -501 (0xfffffe0b) bytes failed verification due to a range checksum mismatch. The read operation will fail with error %7. If this condition persists then please restore the logfile from a previous backup.



Cause:

The reason for this problem is that either the Exchange mailbox store database or public store database is not in a consistent state.

Resolution:

To resolve this problem and access the damaged .edb file, there are some built-in tools provided by the Microsoft to check and repair the Exchange database. You should either repair or restore the corrupt Exchange database file by using the appropriate utility. You can do this by applying the following methods:

1) Check the State of Database:

Use the following command to check the consistency of the database:
eseutil /mh "drive:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\database_name.edb"

If the Exchange database file is not a consistent state, the following message displays on the screen:

State: Dirty Shutdown

2) Repair or Restore the Exchange database:

If the database is not in a consistent state, you need to repair or restore it.

1. Restore from backup: Following steps describe how to restore a database from the backup file:
   1. Move or rename the E00.log file. By default, the location of this file is Drive:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA folder.
   2. Restore the storage group and the log files.
   3. When the storage group is completely restored, try to mount the database.
2. Repair EDB database file: Use the following steps to repair the database file:
   1. Open Command Prompt Window
   2. Move to the Drive:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\Bin folder.
   3. Execute the following command:
      

eseutil /p “drive:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\database_file_name.edb”

4. Run the following command to defragment and rebuild the Exchange database file:
   

eseutil /d /t:x “drive:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\database_file_name.edb

5. Verify the consistent state of the database, type the following command and press 'Enter':
   

eseutil /mh “drive:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\database_file_name.edb”

6. If the database is in a consistent state, then the following text line is appeared:
   

State: Clean Shutdown

7. Use the Infromation Store Integrity (isinteg.exe) utility with the below mentioned switches to repair the logical corruption:
   

Isinteg –s exchange_server_name –fix –test alltests

Run this command until you get zero errors and zero fixes for the same database in the output.

8. Try to mount the Exchange database file.
   

For detail information about the above mentioned methods and utilities, go through this KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/906148



However, if the above methods do not show satisfactorily solution and problem still exist, then you need to use a third-party Exchange Server recovery software to repair the database file. 

Stellar Phoenix Exchange Recovery is one such an effective tool that repair EDB file corrupted due to any reason. The software works well on Windows 7, Vista, XP, Server 2003, and 2000. In addition, this Exchange recovery software is able to recover deleted Exchange mailbox from EDB file. It is compatible with MS Exchange Server 2010, 2007, 2003, 2000 and 5.5 versions.

Resolving the problems of Mbconn.exe file in Exchange Server

Exchange Information store is the most critical constituent of Microsoft Exchange Server. Sometimes, when the Exchange Server is hit by any crashing or corruption issue, information store also gets affected. In order to access your mailbox, you need to mount the Information store. However, under some corruption or any damage situation, the mailbox store or public store denies to mount. In this case you will not be able to access your information such as emails, notes, contacts, images, attachments and more, stored in Exchange Mailbox. These Exchange mailboxes are connected to Information store database that keeps all data of active directory. The Mbconn.exe file is used to connect these mailboxes to Active Directory accounts.