Hello all, I have an SBS 2003 box running Windows Server 2003 SP2 and Exchange 2003 Svr SP*1*. All has been going well until a few weeks ago, when messages with outbound attachments started failing with: "Could not deliver the message in the time limit specified. Please retry or contact your administrator. <clientname.com #4.4.7>" Turns out that a backup had not been run in 3 years, and there were 7500+ log files. Tried to back up, no luck - corruption in the database. Tried various things, wound up using eseutil /p, then eseutil /d, then isinteg alltests per the KB. All that worked, and I was able to make a backup. All the log files are now gone, and the client has not reported any missing data. So now, only *some* of the attachments are failing; and those that are being sent are taking several hours to go through. Obviously the backup/log files issue wasn't it. Any ideas how to fix this, and make attachments go through in a timely fashion? Thanks! -Bruce D.

Hi,As my understand that the speed of attachment sent outis slow, is thattrue?1.What is the size of the attachment?2. What client do you use to sendit?3. If we send the email without attachment to those recipient, how is the issue?Please enable message tracking log and then check where it hangs.Besides, please check if you have proper set for Antivirus application. We should set it on file level. You can check it against the article below.Overview of Exchange Server 2003 and antivirus softwarehttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/823166How to Enable Message Tracking in Exchange System Managerhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998971(EXCHG.65).aspxMessage tracking event IDs in Exchange Server 2003http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821905Improved Message Tracking Features in Exchange Server 2003 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823864 Regards, Xiu

What kind of attachments these are? The default outgoing mail size is 10MB. also if you have implemented any spam filter/Mail scanner software? Vinod |CCNA|MCSE 2003 +Messaging|MCTS|ITIL V3|

The attachments could be anything from Word docs and Excel spreadsheets to PDFs. Size doesn't matter; the attachments are almost all smaller than 1 Mb, and we have seen this behavior on attachments in the 50Kb range. There is mail scanner software, which has not been interfering for several years. I checked its logs, and it doesn't have anything. I turned it off anyway, and the problem is still occurring.

Xiu, The anti-virus is set up properly (I double-checked), but when I try to track a message, i get: "The tracking database file \\<servername>\<servername>.log\E0004440.log is corrupted near byte offset 2233660." ???????

What kind of av have you set up? is it scanning Exchange outgoing emails or just doing file level scanning? Vinod |CCNA|MCSE 2003 +Messaging|MCTS|ITIL V3|

Vinod, It is Symantec Mail Security for Exchange, and it *was* scanning emails. I turned it off to see if that was the problem. (It isn't.) There is also Symantec AV 10 Corporate Edition doing file-level scanning. Yes, I made sure that it was excluding the files and directories listed in KB 823166 .

Enable the logging on SMTP Default VS and send couple of test Mails with attachments In ESM expand protocols and then select SMTP expand and then select Default VS right click and properties general tab below enable logging Vinod |CCNA|MCSE 2003 +Messaging|MCTS|ITIL V3|

Hi, 1. First please try to delete E0004440.log from <servername>.log and then check the issue again. 2. Please ensure that you have exclude message tracking folder from being scanned by antivirus. 3. Please try to rename message tracking folder a. Disable message tracking from ESM(subject logging and message tracking) b. Stop msexchangesa service. c. Rename the program files\Exchsrvr\servername.log to servername.log.old d. Start msexchangesa service. e. Enable message tracking from ESM. This should recreate the shared folder automatically. If the problem still persists, then I Suspect that there could be a corruption in the Exchange database. 1. We may try to use ESEUTIL /p to repair the Exchange database 2. Also ran isinteg 3. Deleted the registry key VirusScan under HKLM\System\CCS\Services\MSExchangeIS 4. Rebooted the server Ramifications of running the eseutil /p or edbutil /d /r command in Exchangehttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/259851 Addition to Vinods suggestion: How to troubleshoot for Exchange Server 2003 transport issues http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821910 Regards, Xiu

Hello Vinod and Xiu, Got the message tracking working - thanks for the advice. I also checked AGAIN that the antivirus had the right exclusions (it did). So, back to my original problem: Once the message tracking was working, I had the client send me another email with an attachment. Here is what Message tracking gave me: 7/31/2009 12:15 PM SMTP Store Driver: Message submitted from Store 7/31/2009 12:15 PM SMTP: Message Submitted to Advanced Queueing 7/31/2009 12:15 PM SMTP: Started Message Submission to Advanced Queue 7/31/2009 12:15 PM SMTP: Message Submitted to Categorizer 7/31/2009 12:15 PM SMTP: Message Categorized and Queued for Routing 7/31/2009 12:15 PM SMTP: Message Routed and Queued for Remote Delivery 7/31/2009 12:15 PM SMTP: Started Outbound Transfer of Message 7/31/2009 12:16 PM Message Transferred to <mail.myserver.com> through SMTP 7/31/2009 12:17 PM SMTP: Started Outbound Transfer of Message 7/31/2009 12:18 PM Message Transferred to <mail.myserver.com> through SMTP 7/31/2009 12:28 PM SMTP: Started Outbound Transfer of Message 7/31/2009 12:32 PM Message Transferred to <mail.myserver.com> through SMTP 7/31/2009 12:42 PM SMTP: Started Outbound Transfer of Message 7/31/2009 12:47 PM Message Transferred to <mail.myserver.com> through SMTP 7/31/2009 12:57 PM SMTP: Started Outbound Transfer of Message 7/31/2009 12:59 PM Message Transferred to <mail.myserver.com> through SMTP Notice how even though it says it transferred the message, it still continues to resend every 15 minutes. That message hasn't gotten to me (2 hours later) The SMTP log for that time period is: #Software: Microsoft Internet Information Services 6.0 #Version: 1.0 #Date: 2009-07-31 16:00:40 #Fields: time c-ip cs-method cs-uri-stem sc-status 16:15:30 <my.mailserver.ip> - - 0 16:15:30 <my.mailserver.ip> EHLO - 0 16:15:30 <my.mailserver.ip> - - 0 16:15:30 <my.mailserver.ip> MAIL - 0 16:15:30 <my.mailserver.ip> - - 0 16:15:30 <my.mailserver.ip> RCPT - 0 16:15:30 <my.mailserver.ip> - - 0 16:15:30 <my.mailserver.ip> DATA - 0 16:15:30 <my.mailserver.ip> - - 0 And it just repeats those 9 lines, over and over. I don't see anything in Event Viewer related to XSVR. Any ideas? Please?

Hi,Do you have any firewall in front of the network??Regards,Xiu

ingress only - and remember, messages without attachments go without problems.

Hi, From the message tracking log ,we found that it spend about 45 minutes on SMTP delivery. We suspect theres something wrong for the network. Before we begin to focus on the network troubleshooting, lets do the following steps first. 1. Please disable TCP Chimney Offload, Receive-side Scaling (RSS) and NetDMA Windows 2003 Scalable Networking pack and its possible effects on Exchange http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/07/18/446400.aspx 2. Please try to update the drive for your NIC to the latest version. After that, if the problem still persists, then please clarify the issue with me again. 1. only *some* of the attachments are failing The issue occur only when you send email with attachment to certain domain? 2. What is the background of the network? Exchange backend + frontend + smarthost + Firewall +Rooter? Please post the detail outbound mail flow here. Besides, please try to use ping computer_name or IP_address with l to identify how large an un-fragmented packet can travel a specific route. More detail information you can refer to the following article: How to Troubleshoot Black Hole Router Issues http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314825/en-us Diagnoses and treatment of black hole routershttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/159211 Regards, Xiu

Turned out not to be an Exchange issue at all. Resolution was that the T-1 line was degraded and giving too many errors.

So it is a Cisco router related issue, is that right?Degraded line performance due to slip seconds on the T1 controller - Ciscowiki http://supportwiki.cisco.com/ViewWiki/index.php/Degraded_line_performance_due_to_slip_seconds_on_the_T1_controllerRegards,Xiu