XADM: Event ID 8004120c Is Logged During Content Indexing Process and Server Performance May Be Poor (331914)

IMPORTANT: This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry

SYMPTOMS

During the Exchange 2000 Server content-indexing process, the following Event ID message may be logged in the Application Event log:8004120c - This file has reached the maximum download limit. Make sure the full text of the document can be meaningfully indexed.Over time, you may experience poor performance from your Exchange 2000 Server-based computer.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, install Exchange 2000 Server Service Pack 3 (SP3). For additional information about how to obtain SP3 for Exchange 2000 Server, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

301378 XGEN: How to Obtain the Latest Exchange 2000 Server Service Pack

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, increase the size of messages that the Exchange 2000 Server content-indexing process indexes. You can configure this setting in the Microsoft Windows registry:

Warning If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, serious problems may occur that require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

For information about how to edit the registry, see the "Changing Keys and Values" Help topic in Regedit.exe or see the "Add and Delete Information in the Registry" and the "Edit Registry Data" Help topics in Regedt32.exe. Microsoft recommends that you back up the registry before you edit it. If you are running Microsoft Windows NT or Microsoft Windows 2000, also update your Emergency Repair Disk (ERD).

Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
Locate the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Search\1.0\Gathering Manager
In the right pane of Registry Editor, right-click MaxDownloadSize, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type the maximum size of the messages that you want to have successfully indexed in MB, click Decimal, and then click OK.

Note The default value is 16.
Quit Registry Editor.

MORE INFORMATION

During the content-indexing process, Event ID message 8004120c is generated when a file is too large to index. By default, messages that are more than 16 MB are not indexed. However, when the content-indexing process examines these messages to determine their size, it creates temporary files for all message attachments that are more than 128 kilobytes (KB). The Microsoft Windows 2000-based operating system may not flush these temporary files to the hard disk in all cases. When messages that are more than 16MB are examined by the content-indexing process, temporary files that are more than 10MB may be created. These large temporary files are created because the content-indexing process treats the unsuccessful indexing of the large message as an error instead of as a successful index. This causes the content-indexing process to try to re-examine this message on each incremental indexing operation after that, resulting in the creation of additional temporary files.