How to Restore an online backup of the IS to a recovery server  running a different version of Windows

Summary

When restoring online backups to a recovery server running Windows 2000, base OS, starting the Information Store service, can be a challenge, if the base OS of the server backed up, was Windows NT, version 4.   The following procedure, is a work around that has been proven to work, without corrupting the Information Store Database files.  This procedure is not recommended for disaster recovery of a production server, as in this case, an identical recovery server would be strongly recommended, however, this procedure is fine for mailbox recovery and defrag analysis.

Procedure

  1. Start Information store and watch application event logs for events 109, as transaction logs are replayed.

     
  2. After all logs are replayed, Information Store startup will fail.

     
  3. Stop Exchange System Attendant, which will stop all Exchange Services.

     
  4. Run the registry editor and export the following key to a reg file.
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE : SYSTEM : CurrentControlSet : Services : MSExchangeIS : RestoreInProgress

     
  5. Delete The RestoreInProgress registry key.

     
  6. Open a command window and switch to working Exchange directory, which is usually:
    \exchsrvr\bin

     
  7. From the command line run the following command
    \exchsrvr\bin>eseutil /r /ispriv

     
  8. When this completes, start the Exchange Information Store Service and watch the application event log.  You should see many ESE97 event ID 174 events, which indicate Exchange has detected an OS upgrade, and is rebuilding database indexes as a precautionary measure.

     
  9. After the indexes are rebuilt the Information Store will again, fail to start.

     
  10. Open a command window and switch to working Exchange directory.

     
  11. From the command line run the following command
    \exchsrvr\bin>isinteg -patch

     
  12. Start the Exchange Information Store.  The service should now start.

     
  13. After Information Store is successfully started, the reg file created in step 4, can be safely deleted.