Message stuck in Exchange SMTP Categorizer
We are running Exchange 2003 Enterprise on Windows server 2003 SP1. Every once in a while a user complains about not receiving a message that was sent from outside our network, from an internet address. When I track the message in Exchange, I see that it arrived on our incoming mail smtp gateway server, but the process stopped at the Categorizer and the message was never sent to the user's mailbox server. There is a workaround that always works. If the sender of the message sends it to themself or someone else, and then the message gets forwarded to the person in our domain, then the user receives the message successfully. I assume this has something to do with message headers, but I'm wondering if there is anything we can do to correct the problem. This problem has happened with messages sent with and without attachments.
Thanks for any insight anyone can give me on this.
Software/Hardware used:
Software/Hardware used:
ASKED:
January 24, 2009 1:03 AM
UPDATED:
January 28, 2009 12:14 AM
Answer Wiki:
See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952841
David
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David,
Thank you so much for this information. I had searched Microsoft’s site and never found any explanation of what causes messages to get stuck in the Categorizer.
However, it doesn’t look like the problem we are having is caused by the same things mentioned in the MS article KB952841. The article sounds like this is the only cause for messages stopping in the Categorizer. I checked our servers’ application event logs, and did not find the same event codes listed in the article. I installed the IIS 6 resource kit tools and ran the Metabase Explorer, following the article’s instructions. Under LM, there were two entries, but one was “1″ and the second was “info.” The info entry was not expandable, and contained no domain names. All relevant information seemed to be in the “1″ entry, so I did not want to delete it.
I appreciate your help with this problem, but there must be something else causing the problem we are having, unless I misunderstood the MS article.
I forgot to mention that I had set the debug logging level to maximum for the Categorizer on the two smtp gateway servers having this problem. The main Categorizer event ID I see is 6015, for legitimate NDRs. I’m not able to find any event log entries corresponding to the times when I have found messages not getting beyond the Categorizer.