The mailbox of a deleted user account still appears on the M drive in Exchange 2000 (318679)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server
This article was previously published under Q318679

SYMPTOMS

In Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server, the mailbox of a deleted user account may still appear in the following folder on the Exchange special Installable File System drive M:

M:\Domain\MBX\Alias

This problem occurs after you use the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in to do the following:
  1. You delete a user account and the mailbox that is associated with that user account from the Active Directory directory service.
  2. You run the Cleanup Agent against the mailbox store.
Although the mailbox has not been deleted by clicking Purge in Exchange System Manager, the mailbox is not supposed to appear. If you re-create the user account, the user's folders appear two times in the M:\Domain\MBX folder.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

MORE INFORMATION

After you perform the actions that are described in the "Symptoms" section, you may receive an error message if you then use the administrator account and Microsoft Windows Explorer to try to access the folder of the deleted user account on drive M. The following is the error message that you may receive:
M:\DOMAIN\MBX\alias is not accessible.

The folder was moved or removed.
No security problems are associated with this problem. The user cannot log on to the account because the account is deleted. The administrator cannot gain access to the folder on drive M.

If you right-click the mailbox that is associated with the deleted user account in Exchange System Manager and then click Purge, the user is permanently removed from this container, and the user's folders are removed from drive M.

For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

262054 How to get service account access to all mailboxes in Exchange 2000

Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:7/1/2004
Keywords:kbbug kbnofix KB318679 kbAudITPRO
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