IT

by wooter on Exchange, Microsoft

Lost your disconnected mailboxes on Exchange 2007?

So you’re happily clicking and typing away, and you need to relink a mailbox to another AD user.  So you do the obvious:

  • Go into the Exchange 2007 Management Console (or Shell)
  • Find the mailbox in the Recipient Configuration
  • Write down the server the mailbox is stored
  • Disconnect the mailbox from the original AD user
  • Get a list of disconnected mailboxes on the server you wrote down

Only to find that the mailbox is not listed. Panic!

Did you forget to check the Deletion Settings on the mailbox store? No, on second glance they are the default 30 days, so the disconnected mailbox should still be available.

But, wait… On Exchange 2003, didn’t you run the Cleanup Agent to find disconnected mailboxes?

No such a thing in Exchange 2007, or is there?

Yes there is.  Clean-Mailboxdatabase is your cmdlet and friend.  Run Clean-Mailboxdatabase <databasename> in an Exchange Management Shell and reload your list of disconnected mailboxes.

You saved the day!  Or at least Exchange saved your job ;).

So next time:

  1. Get-Mailbox john@contoso.com | Format-Table Name, Database
  2. Disable-Mailbox john@contoso.com
  3. Clean-MailboxDatabase “Mailbox ServerMailbox Database Storagegroup Name”
  4. Connect-Mailbox -Database “Mailbox Database” -Identity “John Peoples”   -User john@fabrikam.com
 
by wooter on Active Directory, Uncategorized, VMWare

Windows clients forget their domain after you reset their snapshot?

Ever run into a problem where you revert a domain member server or Windows XP domain client toa previously taken snapshot, and when trying to log on the domain, the logon fails?

I did in 2007, and never really thought of it until I ran into the following article on the VMWare knowledge base: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=1006764&sliceId=1

The cause is very simple, and so is the solution: Member servers and clients have, just like users, accounts with passwords. If set up like this, these passwords are reset every set period. If you revert a machine back to an old snapshot, chances are that the password stored in the snapshot is not up to date with the password stored in Active Directory, and hence, Active Directory does not allow the machine to log on again.

 
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