Friday, December 30, 2011

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.