I checked everything – and the mail boxes just don’t exsist anywhere out there – it’s really odd. They have no user accounts (and havent for 6 months) they have not mailboxes for just about as long – the purge is set for 30days and Veritas does not show them as even wanting to be backed up – I’m thinking more and more it’s time to just redo the job and see if the error goes away.

any other thoughts are appreciated!

Thanks again for all the help!

Lirria

When deleting users inside Active Directory, the associated mailboxes in Exchange are kept for a period of time. This time is called a “retention period.” By default, the retention period is 30 days. This is so that in the case that this user’s mail has to be retrieved, it will be available for a period of time.

Backup Exec ™ will see the mailboxes that have had the associated user accounts deleted from Active Directory, but will be unable to access them. There are four possible options to resolve this error:

1. The first option is to change the retention period as follows:

a. Open Exchange System Manager via Start | Programs | Microsoft Exchange | System Manager
b. Browse to the Mailbox Store of which the retention period is required to be changed.

c. Right-click on the Mailbox Store, and select Properties.

d. Go to the Limits tab, and change the option Keep Deleted Mailboxes for (Days) to the appropriate amount of days that the mailbox should stay on the server, before it is deleted (changing this to 0 will not allow you to recover any mailboxes within Exchange)

2. The second option is to remove the mailbox from Exchange altogether.
(NOTE: This will remove any associated mail inside this mailbox. Only do this if it is certain that none of this person’s mail will need to be recovered.)

a. Open Exchange System Manager via Start | Programs | Microsoft Exchange | System Manager
b. Browse to the mailbox store, where the user’s mailbox is located
c. Expand the mailbox store, and select Mailboxes. All the mailboxes for this mailbox store will be displayed.
d. Right-click on Mailboxes, and select Run Cleanup Agent.
e. Right-click on the mailbox that is marked for deletion (indicated by a red “X” on the mailbox), and select Purge.
f. Respond Yes to the message about removing the mailbox.
g. Open Backup Exec, and verify that the mailbox does not show up

3. The third option is to associate the mailbox with another user inside Active Directory. This option is only available if the new user does not have an associated mailbox inside Exchange.

a. Open Exchange System Manager via Start | Programs | Microsoft Exchange | System Manager
b. Browse to the Mailbox Store, where the user’s mailbox is located
c. Expand the Mailbox Store, and select Mailboxes. A list of all of the mailboxes on the Exchange server will be displayed.
d. Right-click on Mailboxes, and select Run Cleanup Agent
e. Right-click on the mailbox that is marked for deletion, and select Reconnect.

f. Select the new user to be associated with the mailbox.

g. Click OK, and the mailbox name will change to the new user.

4. The fourth option is to deselect the mailbox for backup inside the Backup Exec backup job operation Selection List.

a. Log on as the Backup Exec Service Account
b. Open Backup Exec
c. Navigate to the Job Definitions tab
d. Right-click on the job that needs to be modified and select Properties
e. Click the Selections tab
f. Expand Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes, and clear the selection of the appropriate mailbox.

I’ll try and recreate the job and see if the problem goes away (providing I can get the tape drive working today)

thanks!
Lirria