MTG: OS2 Causes a GP Fault in Async.ovl.exe (173099)

SYMPTOMS

When processing mail with the Microsoft Mail Multitasking MTA for Windows NT (NT MMTA) external program, NT MMTA crashes with a system error message:

OS/2 caused a General Protection Fault in ASYNC.OVL.EXE

CAUSE

This error will occur when the external program encounters a mailbag that contains a message which is corrupted. This corrupted message could be in an external postoffice outbound mailbag, directory synchronization mailbag, gateway mailbag, or the inbound mailbag. When more details are enabled for logging mta activity, the Session.log may end with an entry similar to the following example:

   m:\mai\ma.\001.net!agate!biosci!news.stanford..mai error code = 2

Because there is no MAI subdirectory named "MA.", this is the corrupted message causing the NT MMTA to fail.

RESOLUTION

The mailbag containing the corrupted message must be reset or rebuilt. A manual reset using MS-DOS Debug or the Mailq16 utility can be used to fix the mailbag files. In some cases, identification of the affected mailbag may not be possible.

MORE INFORMATION

Use the Mailq16.exe utility that ships in the Microsoft Mail for PC Networks Resource Kit to reset or rebuild the KEY and MBG files for the user. Mailq16.exe is also found on the TechNet CD.

For additional information on how to run Mailq16.exe, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

130285 PC Adm: Resetting or Rebuilding Mailbags with MAILQ16.EXE

For additional information how to use MS-DOS Debug to reset mailbags, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

104279 PC DB: Creating or Resetting a .KEY and .MBG Pair

NOTE: Resetting a mailbag will result in a loss of all messages it contains.