a new user account and mailbox were created. After that, a hard drive failure occured on the DC. A restore brought back AD except for the new user account which had not made it to backup. Now the mailbox exists without a user account. I tried to run the clean-mailboxdatabase commandlet on the DB. I expected to see the mailbox show up as disconnected in order to reconnect it to the newly created user account. I waited overnight and still the mailbox is not showing up as disconnected. If I try to bring up the mailbox properties I get errors that the object cannot be found on the DC. What to do?

Will it let you disable the mailbox?

No, same error that the account was missing on the DC.

Maybe you can restore the account from a backup.

Maybe you can restore the account from a backup.

Maybe you can restore the account from a backup.

Maybe you can restore the account from a backup.

That's the problem. The DC's drive crashed before the backup got the new user account.

Was there a cache mode Outlook client already configured for this mailbox? Or simply restore from backup to a recovery storage group and recreate the account and mailbox and import the restored email.

Yes, I think so. The acount was for one of our remote domains.

Or restore from backup of course. At some point, you may just want to go that route and recreate the account and mailbox.

If the user still has the cached OST I would export it to PST, create a new mailbox for the user and then import it If that doesn't work for you then I would take an offline copy of the store and use out Lucid8's DigiScope http://www.lucid8.com/product/digiscope.asp to open the EDB. Once opened you can then export to PST or D&D to a new mailbox Troy Werelius Lucid8

The account was newly created, so there isn't anything in the mailbox that is necessarry. I just wanted to keep exchange free of broken mailboxes.

It looks like it create the new mailbox as user2@domain.com. Hmm, didn't want this. I have to find some way of getting rid of the old mailbox.

Who owns user@domain.com? That information is in Active Directory.

Ahh I missed that, then IMO nothing to worry about Troy

Still, I'm faced with a broken mailbox in exchange and no ability to recreate it without the "2" in mailbox and smtp address. Example: user2@domain.com

Right, sorry I replied before the above responses came in. As Andy stated that email address is in AD and is owned by an account. You said the original user created however does not exist or at least it doesn't display? Should be able to find the entry in AD to see who owns it and then edit. Troy

Can't edit the smtp address due to the email address policy.

Do you know what account in AD has the address user@domain.com associated with it? Troy

The account does not exist. It was lost with the hard drive crash. AD was restored to a time BEFORE the account existed. The account NEVER made it to backup.

Uncheck the enforcement of the policy for that account and then change it to the smtp address you want and see if it lets you. If not, query AD on who owns that SMTP address. You can do that via ADUC, The Exchange tools or a ldap query.

Right I understand, however that email address is IN USE as far as AD is concerned. Look at these post to see if they will help http://msmvps.com/blogs/ad/archive/2008/12/02/how-to-search-for-an-email-address-in-active-directory.aspx http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/ScriptCenter/en-us/796db25f-7a6b-47e5-82ae-8788a81d8998 MORE SCRIPTS HERE http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/en-us/site/search?f%5B0%5D.Type=SearchText&f%5B0%5D.Value=Email%20address&f%5B1%5D.Type=RootCategory&f%5B1%5D.Value=activedirectory&f%5B1%5D.Text=Active%20Directory OLDER METHODS http://www.exchangepedia.com/2006/03/how-to-find-an-email-address-in-active-directory.html Troy Werelius Lucid8

I found the GUID for the offending account. I suppose if I remove the related information from AD then the mailbox will become disconnected & I can reattach it to the new account. Now just trying to figure out how to do that.

LDAP explorer. Active directory is based on LDAP, so if you find an LDAP utility that will let you browse and edit the LDAP structure you can resolve this problem. I have had to do this before. However, be careful, if you do this wrong it's bad, very bad. Take a extra backup first.

Removing information from AD can be tricky and dangerous if done improperly, so in this case; I would recommend that you edit the email address in the record to start so that you can get your initial issue of being able to create the new user and mailbox with the desired address handled. Then once thats done explore it very carefully and before you delete anything take a backup of AD just in case something goes wrong, at least then you have a rollback opportunity. Troy Werelius Lucid8

I have tried serveral options to reconnect these mailboxes & none have worked. At this point I just want to remove them. Nothing of importance in there anyway. How can I do this if I'm still receiving the error that it cannot find the account?

Hey Mike, so you said that you found the email address in question and where it was attached, is this user/account its attached to, viewable by user management tools? If so I would remove with them, if not you will need to resort to ADSI Edit, however; Backup AD before you do anything Make sure no other changes are being made during your edit time, i.e. new users, deleting of users, changing of information etc Be careful with ADSI Edit since editing AD can be damaging if done incorrectly Only other thing I can think of is to perhaps do a health check on AD. I haven't done this in awhile so I don't remember if there is an orphan check that would properly remove this account, but if so that would be best. Troy

Not exactly correct. The user account no longer exists. I was trying to use ADSI to attach the mailbox to a new account. It didn't work. I still have an orphaned mailbox. I assume that this is because there is no longer any information in AD in regards to this mailbox and it's once associated user account. Now I just need to find a way to get the mailbox out of exchange and permanently delete it. When I try, I get the error that it can't find the user account. After running mailboxdatabase cleanup, it should have become disconnected, but is not.

It may come down to moving all the other mailboxes to another store and then removing that store via adsiedit.

Ouch, was really hoping it wouldn't come to that. We have a migration to 2010 comming up. Mayber I'll wait until then and just not more the broken mailboxes.