Two weeks ago, the server suffered an issue with the Exchange functionality where incoming mail was not being delivered.  Outgoing mail and user access to mailboxes was not impacted.  After review, it was determined that the SMTP connector had become corrupted.  After researching the issue, it was determined that the fix was to remove IIS from the server and reinstall.   After the IIS reinstall, a reinstall of Exchange was required to apply the correct IIS configuration to allow Exchange to operate.  This seemed to fix the issue until yesterday.

A call from the customer revealed that now users cannot access their email via Outlook or through OWA.  After several hours of troubleshooting, it was determined that the root cause was due to corruption in the Active Directory database and in the Security Policies on the network.  Since Server 2000, and SBS 2000, are no longer supported by Microsoft support, the only option is to try and research the issue and fix the problem using online resources.

The troubleshooting procedure included performing a hard repair on the Active Directory database and removing the local security policy database on the server and then applying the default security templates.  Even after the repair, the server will still not allow Exchange or other system services to function.  It was determined that the corruption is to extensive to repair and the only option would be to rebuild the domain and reinstall applications.

Due to the age of the server, it was determined that now is a good time to upgrade the server and OS to bring the server up to date and correct the issues at the same time.

A new server and OS licensing was purchased today and over the next few weeks, we will be writing about the process by which we build the server and migrate the existing network environment over to the new hardware and software envrionment.