Exchange Mailbox delete but can't find the user in AD

[Ivo Van Hoovels]

We are experiencing intermittent problems with giving users permissions to others' mailboxes (secretary can see the activities of this week only, if she looks at an upcoming week there's this "you-have-no-rights-to-do-this" message and when she looks back at the current week that doesn't work anymore either, only after a exit/restart of Outlook, etc).

The installation was done with an in-place upgrade of Exchange 5.5 -> 2000 with the message database coming out of an SBS4.5 world, and I guess there are consistency problems (maybe also on the Active Directory level).

Therefore I want to offload all mailboxes (to .PST), de-install the complete Exchange and then reinstall it and upload the .PSTs and see if it helps. But I can only deinstall the product if all mailboxes are deleted, and deletion of mailboxes works through the AD and there are two mailboxes (both size 0) for which I cannot find the AD user information.

The "Full Mailbox Directory Names" (in Exchange System Administrator) are:
/O=ORA/OU=S1/CN=CONFIGURATION/CN=SERVERS/CN=S1/CN=MICROSOFT SYSTEM ATTENDANT
/O=ORA/OU=S1/CN=CONFIGURATION/CN=CONNECTIONS/CN=SMTP(S1)/CN={6BA77497-34CA-4AE0-B68C-B5FD4A1D7E32}

How do I get rid of them? Any other suggestions are welcome. (I lost my Asia/Pacific identity)

Thanks, Ivo

[Poweruser]

Did You try searching the AD for "System attendant" and SMTP(S1) , or you could run a Cleanup agent on the Mailbox store and then reconnect to 2 differnt dummy AD accounts which has no mailboxes and then try to delete it.
HTH,

[Poweruser]

Did You try searching the AD for "System attendant" and 6BA77497 , or you could run a Cleanup agent on the Mailbox store and then reconnect to 2 differnt dummy AD accounts which has no mailboxes and then try to delete it.
HTH,

[Ivo Van Hoovels]

Searching for these strings eg "SMTP(S1" gives no result in AD, and I already ran the Cleanup Agent in Exchange Administrator several times. Reconnecting does not work because these accounts are not deleted, therefore the Reconnect/Purge actions in Exchange Adminstrator are both greyed (not accessible). Which brings us to MSKB 260378... Or a complete reinstall on new hardware since this is a production machine!
Regards, Ivo

[Matthew Fisher_2]

Make sure in Active Directory Users and Computers you have View -> Advance Features, Ticked in the MMC this will then allow you to view the system attendant mailbox and remove it.

Cheers

[Rune J. Winje]

Also take care to update your (new) Exchange 2000 installation with a hotfix related to Outlook 2003 clients:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=824960


Cheers,
Rune

[Ivo Van Hoovels]

I have decided to reinstall the whole SBS2000 on new hardware recreate the users (about 20) by hand and import the mailboxes through .PST
Thanks for the suggestion about the 2003-fix, something to remember for the future (no 2003 clients so far).