How to Wipe the MTA Database

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This procedure explains how to wipe the MTA database — specifically, how to move files to create an empty database directory.

Before You Begin

Before you perform the procedure in this topic, consider the following:

If you need to wipe an MTA database, you should contact Microsoft Product Support Services for assistance to ensure that the steps are performed correctly. If you apply the steps incorrectly, you may lose e-mail messages that are present in the MTA message queues.

Procedure

Wipe the MTA database

  1. Use the Services tool (Administrative Tools program group in the Start menu) to ensure that the Microsoft Exchange MTA Stacks service is stopped.

  2. Copy the entire contents of the MTA database directory (by default, this is the \Program Files\Exchsrvr\Mtadata directory) to a different location. This is preferable to moving only the .dat files, because Microsoft Product Support Services might require the entire contents of the Mtadata directory to determine what caused the problem.

    Note

    Do not delete the original .dat files until the messages have been recovered.

  3. Verify that the copy process completes successfully, and then delete the .dat files from the MTA database directory.

  4. Copy all files found in the \Setup\i386\Exchange\Bootenv directory on the Exchange Server 2003 product CD to the active MTA database directory. The Microsoft Exchange MTA Stacks service cannot start without the core .dat files.

  5. Remove the read-only file attribute from the copied files. There should be no read-only files in the MTA database directory.

  6. Restart the Microsoft Exchange MTA Stacks service. If the MTA had problems from corrupted messages in the .dat files, the MTA can now resume operation and message transfer.

For More Information

After you have performed an MTA database wipe, the messages in the .dat files that you moved out of the MTA database directory will need to be replayed before they can be delivered. For detailed instructions about how to replay DAT files after you have wiped the MTA database, see How to Replay DAT Files After an MTA Database Wipe.