Exchange 2003: mail stuck in local delivery queue
This one was a bitch, and since the closest thing I could find to a remedy online was to delete the store and create a new one (not bloody likely) I’ll publish the results of a call to MS Critical Support for the benefit of the masses.
The problem was one user had almost 50 emails stuck in the local delivery queue. They could send email inside and out, but incoming would never get there. I believe the problem was a corrupted mailbox.
To fix the user’s mailbox, I exported their account to a .pst using Exmerge. I then deleted the user’s mailbox and created a new one, adding back in all of their aliases. This got new mail flowing again without too much fuss. The mail in the local delivery queue, however, was still stuck.
To get this going to the right mailbox, we had to ‘recategorize’ the existing mail to the new mailbox.
- Stop the SMTP service.
- Open Regedit and navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SmtpSvc - Creat a subkey named “Queuing”
- Select Queuing and on right hand pane create new dword value with name “ResetMessageStatus� with value 1 in hexadecimal.
- Restart the SMTP service – check the queues and see if mail is being delivered. Also check the account mailbox at this point.
- Once all the mails are delivered to that user, stop the SMTP service and change the value for �ResetMessageStatus� to 0 and start the SMTP service.
That should do it. Seems simple, right? HA! I bashed on it for almost two hours, then called crit support and tech#1 bashed on it for an hour, then called in tech#2 who took another half-hour to come up with the registry fix. We still ended up losing a handful of emails, but that was because it took the user two full days to tell me something was wrong, and our queue alarm didn’t catch the problem.
Which, of course, will be step 3 of this process…
*Update: comments closed due to excessive spam. Glad I could help all of you with this post.
April 26th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Stupid thing is, the alarm should have caught it. Among Monday’s tasks will be to figure out what happened there.
July 8th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
The only reference that matched the exact issue we were getting.
RAID 5 fail and rebuild the server then restored the Exchange data.
Everything worked a treat except on mail box would not receive ANY mail internal external or calendar invites at all.
This fixed it perfectly – Great Work Thanks!
April 27th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
You’re a life saver, saved me a whole lot of extra work. If you are ever in New Zealand I’ll buy you a beer.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Thank you! Saved me a ton of time also.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:24 am
Finding this fix saved me a great deal of time and effort. Thanks for sharing it with the world. All the best.
September 4th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
You totally kick ass. This had me confused for hours. I just spent 60 hours recovering and defraging a 70GB EDB. To find a quick easy fix like this really feels good. Thank you.
September 7th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Thanks heaps man! This worked a treat.
September 10th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Wow. THanks for the great tip. I completely expected it not to work, but when i popped open outlook and saw all the queued mail there, I nearly shat myself. Your E-penis is large.
October 5th, 2009 at 6:58 am
Many thanks – this resolved a whole world of pain very quickly, Cheers
October 20th, 2009 at 5:49 am
My SBS 2003 went down. After restoring from Acronis the mailbox has similar. I added registry key and didn’t fix the problem. Any idea? Thanks
October 21st, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Thank you for sharing. I had the exact same issue and after I found your post your instructions worked perfectly. There wasn’t much out here on this issue that was a good solution and you have it goin on!!
January 25th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
I had this exact same issue. I followed the guidelines and BSOD my exchange server….LOL…only joking! Worked perfect!
Thanks for putting this post up! Saved myself a lot of time.
March 23rd, 2010 at 1:24 pm
AWESOME, THE ONLY thing that actually worked after about 100 tries on other fixes…
April 14th, 2010 at 9:36 am
Yo Da Man!!! If you are ever in Seattle I will have to buy you a QUADRUPLE SHOT GRANDE WHOLE MILK WITH WHIPPED CREAM WHITE CHOCOLATE PEPPERMINT MOCHA LATTE.
Thanks for the great info!
April 23rd, 2010 at 8:23 am
Thanks for taking the time to post this. Guys like you are why the internet is still great.
June 3rd, 2010 at 9:34 am
WONDERFUL! Thanks!
June 11th, 2010 at 11:08 am
This was simply an awesome fix. Saved lot of time. But wonder what could corrupt a mailbox in the first place. Any one with any ideas? As this has been happening for a while now, with the same person and few more…. any suggestions would be really apprecitaed…
August 31st, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Thanks A lot, glad i stumbled across this before calling MS.
I know what may have corrupted my mailbox, VMware migration, I moved location of the VM and this had to be caused by that….although the user mailbox was almost 6gb which doesn’t help.
November 2nd, 2010 at 8:58 pm
Thanks Man,
Had the same issue with a vmware import and it had to be the CEO’s mail that did not work.
This fixed solved the issue..
January 18th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
Fantastic. Saved me hours!
February 7th, 2011 at 8:42 am
Thanks so much. This fixed a broken VM image that was working then just stopped delivering mail to the main user and left it stuck in Local Delivery :-( Couldn’t find anything on microsoft site suggesting this registry hack as a simple and elegant solution, so many, many thanks!
Why the hell don’t Microsoft put all these extra options into right-click context menus???
February 23rd, 2011 at 2:24 am
Thank you so much for this fix! Saved my bacon in the 13th hour before the CEO & CFO got into the office. All nighter to bring it back online, but its working!!
March 2nd, 2011 at 2:05 am
What a guru you are buddy thanks for the fix bloody excellent mate.
This was a real headache till I came across this.
March 28th, 2011 at 10:13 pm
Thank you for posting this, it worked!
May 5th, 2011 at 10:30 am
Thanks for sharing, works great
May 12th, 2011 at 7:16 am
Great job man, that regedit bit really saved my life. We had a problem with a VM backup as well, afterwards, some users’ mails were stuck in the queue.
Cheers mate!
September 29th, 2011 at 4:34 am
Thanks a lot, that really helped us out !
Cheers !
January 4th, 2012 at 1:20 pm
Thanks for your great article! Nice to hear that it helped some people.
As other people here, I migrated my SBS 2003-server from one VMware Host to another. Unfortunately your suggestion didn’t make the trick, and my problem is still unsolved. :-(
March 11th, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Thanks a ton, worked for us after a corrupt database problem and then the queue would not move.
March 29th, 2012 at 7:43 am
Sadly didnt work for me any other ideas ?
local and external connect still stuck
May 31st, 2012 at 5:46 am
Dude. Seriously. Thanks. :)
Fortunately for me, that registry “resetmessagestatus” fixed it.
July 20th, 2012 at 2:47 am
Cheers bud! Worked a treat. Much appreciated.
October 2nd, 2012 at 6:27 pm
Great article! Exchange 2003 on VMware here, a failed backup caused 30+ mailboxes (out of 400) to corrupt themselves in this manner.
Worked for 5 hours or so to fix everything up. This is a lifesaver!!!!!