My Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server system suddenly seemed to develop a problem sending email, locally or through the SMTP gateway. The server is putting outgoing messages in clients' Outboxes but not sending the messages. After I reboot the server, Exchange sends the waiting messages and might continue to send messages successfully for about 30 minutes before the problem reoccurs. I looked in the event log and discovered that each time, the IISAdmin service crashes immediately before the problem occurs. Do you know what's happening?
I have a pretty good idea. For better or worse, Exchange 2000 uses Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0's SMTP service. This arrangement means that if the SMTP service or the IISAdmin service crashes, Exchange can no longer send email.
The most likely problem in your situation is a failure of the IIS SMTP service to function normally. The IISAdmin service is most likely crashing because of a corrupt IIS metabase. (The metabase is designed for high-speed read/write operations, and it logs all changes to IIS, so the IISAdmin service often crashes when this database becomes corrupted.) Repairing the problem takes about 30 minutes to 1 hour, so set aside that much time before you begin.
First, set all your Exchange services to be disabled at startup. (You could use a manual start option, but I've seen services restart automatically despite that setting.) Next, open the Windows 2000 Setup program from the installation CD-ROM and choose the option to uninstall IIS. After you uninstall IIS, reboot the server, rerun Win2K Setup, and reinstall IIS. The system might not prompt you to reboot, but you should do so anyway.
Next, reinstall any Win2K service pack you'd previously installed on the server. Make sure to apply any post—service pack fixes that relate to IIS.
To be on the safe side, copy your mdbdata directory (be sure to include the log files). If this directory is split across multiple disks, copy all the directories to a new disk or directory. (When you're copying the directory, keep in mind that the displayed estimated copy time is rarely accurate. I copied a 4GB directory in 10 minutes, but the time display estimated that the procedure would take about 2 days.)
After you've copied the directory or directories, reinstall Exchange 2000. Be sure to select the reinstall option when the Exchange installation begins. After the reinstallation process is completed, reboot the server. If you were running Exchange 2000 Service Pack 1 (SP1), reinstall the service pack. If you weren't using SP1, I recommend that you install it now. (I needed to install the service pack twice when I went through this process. For some reason, the first SP1 installation didn't upgrade store.exe, thus causing an error whenever I tried to mount a storage group—SG. Reinstalling SP1 resolved the problem.) At this point, Exchange 2000 should work normally. If you still have problems, you'll need to call Microsoft to see what else might be wrong with your Exchange server.
What can you do to prevent such corruption from reoccurring? Very little, according to Microsoft: Make sure you install the most recent IIS service pack and any post—service pack patches. I question why Microsoft chose to incorporate SMTP into Exchange 2000 by way of IIS; I'd rather see IIS piggyback on an Exchange-based SMTP server. I find that as a standalone SMTP solution, Exchange 2000 isn't as reliable as Exchange Server 5.5: The SMTP service's dependency on other services increases the risk of system errors.
I can't get Email Protection in Symantec's Norton AntiVirus 2001 to work with Microsoft Office XP's Outlook version. How do I accomplish this task?
I called Symantec to determine the best method for configuring Outlook to work with Norton AntiVirus Email Protection. According to the vendor, you can use the following procedure to create a new mail account with enabled Email Protection. (The names of menu items and options are somewhat different in Outlook 2000, but the procedure to enable Email Protection for that version follows the same basic steps.)
First, close all applications other than Outlook. In Outlook, click Tools, Accounts from the menu bar. Go to the Mail tab, which displays a list of accounts. Select the account for which you want to enable Norton AntiVirus, then click Properties to open the account's Properties dialog box.
Go to the General tab and type a name for the account (in the text box within the Mail Account section). In the User Information section, enter your username (as provided by your ISP) in the Name text box. If you want, you can enter the name of your organization in the Organization text box. Enter your Internet email address (as provided by your ISP) in the E-mail address text box. You can also type a reply address in the Reply address field (this entry is optional).
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