@discussions.microsoft.com>
2009-07-17 21:45:01 UTC
To whom it may concern,
We took over technical responsibilities for a company that seems to have
persistent but sporadic network drive loss and file inaccessibility issues.
For some background information, we have a Windows 2003 SP2 Domain
Controller/Exchange server that has limits set on mailbox sizes of 1.5GB soft
cap and 1.7GB hard cap.
User workstations are Windows XP Pro SP3.
When a user starts getting warnings in Outlook that they are about to reach
their mailbox limit we archive their data out of the exchange mail stores
into PST files that are stored on the server. Then the PSTs are reattached to
the users Outlook for the user’s reference purposes.
Prior to my company taking over support role for this company, they had
never had this sort of maintenance work done on their Exchange server and no
limits were ever set. Thus the mail stores were gigantic and their mailboxes
were bloating to over 7-10GB each.
I suppose at some point the former IT team decided to attempt an archive or
it was potentially automated by Outlook.
We found archive.pst files that were 4-10GB each. Fortunately these files
were not corrupted and were able to be opened and some of the data retrieved.
We also have the archive PSTs that we have created that are 1-1.8 GB in size.
These PSTs reside in the users home directory which is a network drive
mapped via a batch file. Prior to this they were using Kix32 logon scripts
to map their network drives.
I understand that Microsoft claims that storing PST files on the
server/network for regular access is unsupported but this is done for several
other companies/clients without issue.
So now on the problem! This problem does not affect one user but the entire
company.
The users were losing access to their network drive share entirely on
occasions, more times than not, whenever one of these PST files were
attempted to be accessed by opening them in outlook, when the Kix32 logon
script was in place. Because the network drives were becoming entirely
inaccessible, the Kix32 logon script was replaced with basic batch files.
For this company these PSTs are the largest file sizes that they deal with
but I personally deal with larger ghost images (100+ GB) that I push across
the networks on far less adequate hardware. This is why I’m at an utter loss
to the error messages and loss of network drive accessibility I am receiving.
When the PST does attach itself in the client’s outlook and it’s attempted
to be opened it gives the error “file cannot be accessed.” Outlook is even
installed on the server and I attempted to open the PST (which is theory is
at that point “on the local workstation”) and it still generated the “file
could not be accessed.”
I worked with Microsoft Outlook support specialist in hopes of a resolution,
which was when I was informed that PSTs being stored on the server was
unsupported. Thus per the outlook support specialist request I attempted to
copy these PSTs down to the local workstation to open them and the following
errors were generated:
Cannot copy E-Mail Backup 2009-1_4_30_09: Not enough server storage is
available to process this command.
Cannot Copy E-mail Backup 2009-2 (7-14-09): Insufficient system resources
exist to complete the requested service.
E-mail Backup 2009-2 (7-14-09) is a 1.3GB PST file.
The server has 4GB of ram and currently utilizing 2.0GB of memory, it also
has 8GB of page file space and the server has 700GB of free disk space, and
the workstation has plenty of free space as well.
This leads me to believe it is an SMB/file sharing problem.
I eventually rebooted the server and the PSTs are now accessible from the
network and are able to be moved to the local workstation to be attached and
opened. They are also now able to be opened from the server’s outlook as
well.
Rebooting the server in the middle of the day because of a problem of this
caliber is not a permanent solution to this problem but simply a temporary
fix.
I hope you all will be able to help provide me some insight into how I can
resolve this problem or troubleshoot it further.
I greatly appreciate any input or assistance.
My apologies if this is not in the proper forum, feel free to move and
notify me, if necessary.
Regards,
Nick Bowman
Senior Technician
Peregrine Computer Consultants Corp.
3927 Old Lee Hwy
Suite 102-C
Fairfax, VA 22030
703-359-9700 x 44
***@pccc.com
We took over technical responsibilities for a company that seems to have
persistent but sporadic network drive loss and file inaccessibility issues.
For some background information, we have a Windows 2003 SP2 Domain
Controller/Exchange server that has limits set on mailbox sizes of 1.5GB soft
cap and 1.7GB hard cap.
User workstations are Windows XP Pro SP3.
When a user starts getting warnings in Outlook that they are about to reach
their mailbox limit we archive their data out of the exchange mail stores
into PST files that are stored on the server. Then the PSTs are reattached to
the users Outlook for the user’s reference purposes.
Prior to my company taking over support role for this company, they had
never had this sort of maintenance work done on their Exchange server and no
limits were ever set. Thus the mail stores were gigantic and their mailboxes
were bloating to over 7-10GB each.
I suppose at some point the former IT team decided to attempt an archive or
it was potentially automated by Outlook.
We found archive.pst files that were 4-10GB each. Fortunately these files
were not corrupted and were able to be opened and some of the data retrieved.
We also have the archive PSTs that we have created that are 1-1.8 GB in size.
These PSTs reside in the users home directory which is a network drive
mapped via a batch file. Prior to this they were using Kix32 logon scripts
to map their network drives.
I understand that Microsoft claims that storing PST files on the
server/network for regular access is unsupported but this is done for several
other companies/clients without issue.
So now on the problem! This problem does not affect one user but the entire
company.
The users were losing access to their network drive share entirely on
occasions, more times than not, whenever one of these PST files were
attempted to be accessed by opening them in outlook, when the Kix32 logon
script was in place. Because the network drives were becoming entirely
inaccessible, the Kix32 logon script was replaced with basic batch files.
For this company these PSTs are the largest file sizes that they deal with
but I personally deal with larger ghost images (100+ GB) that I push across
the networks on far less adequate hardware. This is why I’m at an utter loss
to the error messages and loss of network drive accessibility I am receiving.
When the PST does attach itself in the client’s outlook and it’s attempted
to be opened it gives the error “file cannot be accessed.” Outlook is even
installed on the server and I attempted to open the PST (which is theory is
at that point “on the local workstation”) and it still generated the “file
could not be accessed.”
I worked with Microsoft Outlook support specialist in hopes of a resolution,
which was when I was informed that PSTs being stored on the server was
unsupported. Thus per the outlook support specialist request I attempted to
copy these PSTs down to the local workstation to open them and the following
errors were generated:
Cannot copy E-Mail Backup 2009-1_4_30_09: Not enough server storage is
available to process this command.
Cannot Copy E-mail Backup 2009-2 (7-14-09): Insufficient system resources
exist to complete the requested service.
E-mail Backup 2009-2 (7-14-09) is a 1.3GB PST file.
The server has 4GB of ram and currently utilizing 2.0GB of memory, it also
has 8GB of page file space and the server has 700GB of free disk space, and
the workstation has plenty of free space as well.
This leads me to believe it is an SMB/file sharing problem.
I eventually rebooted the server and the PSTs are now accessible from the
network and are able to be moved to the local workstation to be attached and
opened. They are also now able to be opened from the server’s outlook as
well.
Rebooting the server in the middle of the day because of a problem of this
caliber is not a permanent solution to this problem but simply a temporary
fix.
I hope you all will be able to help provide me some insight into how I can
resolve this problem or troubleshoot it further.
I greatly appreciate any input or assistance.
My apologies if this is not in the proper forum, feel free to move and
notify me, if necessary.
Regards,
Nick Bowman
Senior Technician
Peregrine Computer Consultants Corp.
3927 Old Lee Hwy
Suite 102-C
Fairfax, VA 22030
703-359-9700 x 44
***@pccc.com