Exchange 2003: mail stuck in local delivery queue
This one was a bitch, and since the closest thing I could find to a remedy online was to delete the store and create a new one (not bloody likely) I’ll publish the results of a call to MS Critical Support for the benefit of the masses.
The problem was one user had almost 50 emails stuck in the local delivery queue. They could send email inside and out, but incoming would never get there. I believe the problem was a corrupted mailbox.
To fix the user’s mailbox, I exported their account to a .pst using Exmerge. I then deleted the user’s mailbox and created a new one, adding back in all of their aliases. This got new mail flowing again without too much fuss. The mail in the local delivery queue, however, was still stuck.
To get this going to the right mailbox, we had to ‘recategorize’ the existing mail to the new mailbox.
- Stop the SMTP service.
- Open Regedit and navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SmtpSvc - Creat a subkey named “Queuing”
- Select Queuing and on right hand pane create new dword value with name “ResetMessageStatus” with value 1 in hexadecimal.
- Restart the SMTP service – check the queues and see if mail is being delivered. Also check the account mailbox at this point.
- Once all the mails are delivered to that user, stop the SMTP service and change the value for “ResetMessageStatus” to 0 and start the SMTP service.
That should do it. Seems simple, right? HA! I bashed on it for almost two hours, then called crit support and tech#1 bashed on it for an hour, then called in tech#2 who took another half-hour to come up with the registry fix. We still ended up losing a handful of emails, but that was because it took the user two full days to tell me something was wrong, and our queue alarm didn’t catch the problem.
Which, of course, will be step 3 of this process…
April 26th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Stupid thing is, the alarm should have caught it. Among Monday’s tasks will be to figure out what happened there.
July 8th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
The only reference that matched the exact issue we were getting.
RAID 5 fail and rebuild the server then restored the Exchange data.
Everything worked a treat except on mail box would not receive ANY mail internal external or calendar invites at all.
This fixed it perfectly – Great Work Thanks!
April 27th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
You’re a life saver, saved me a whole lot of extra work. If you are ever in New Zealand I’ll buy you a beer.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Thank you! Saved me a ton of time also.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:24 am
Finding this fix saved me a great deal of time and effort. Thanks for sharing it with the world. All the best.
September 4th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
You totally kick ass. This had me confused for hours. I just spent 60 hours recovering and defraging a 70GB EDB. To find a quick easy fix like this really feels good. Thank you.
September 7th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Thanks heaps man! This worked a treat.
September 10th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Wow. THanks for the great tip. I completely expected it not to work, but when i popped open outlook and saw all the queued mail there, I nearly shat myself. Your E-penis is large.
October 5th, 2009 at 6:58 am
Many thanks – this resolved a whole world of pain very quickly, Cheers
October 20th, 2009 at 5:49 am
My SBS 2003 went down. After restoring from Acronis the mailbox has similar. I added registry key and didn’t fix the problem. Any idea? Thanks
October 21st, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Thank you for sharing. I had the exact same issue and after I found your post your instructions worked perfectly. There wasn’t much out here on this issue that was a good solution and you have it goin on!!
January 25th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
I had this exact same issue. I followed the guidelines and BSOD my exchange server….LOL…only joking! Worked perfect!
Thanks for putting this post up! Saved myself a lot of time.