How to run Eseutil on a computer without Exchange Server

You might need to run Eseutil against a database on a computer that does not have Microsoft Exchange Server installed on it. This situation normally occurs when there is not enough free space on the Exchange server to complete tasks such as an offline defragmentation of an Exchange Server database file.

In these limited scenarios, the required Exchange binaries can be copied over to a non-Exchange server temporarily. Or, the required Exchange binaries can be run from a network share.

For a permanent solution, you must install Exchange in Administrator-only mode. When you install Exchange in Administrator-only mode, the appropriate binaries are copied to the destination computer.

For more information about space requirements when you use the Eseutil utility to defragment your database, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Important For the following procedure, we recommend that you use the same versions of Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) files that are on the Exchange server.

Exchange Server 5.5

1. Create a new folder on the computer that does not have Exchange Server installed on that particular computer.
2. Copy the Eseutil.exe, Ese.dll, jcb.dll, and Exchmem.dll files from the Exchange Server 2007 computer's Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Bin folder to the new folder that you created.
3. At a command prompt, move to the new folder.
4. Run eseutil from this folder against any databases that were copied over from the Exchange server.

These files should be copied to a computer that is running Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3 or a later version. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: If the Exchange server and the computer without Exchange Server are not running the same Windows NT version and service pack, you may see events in the Application log that indicate that the database indexes are being re-created upon restarting the database service. This is typical and does not indicate an issue. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Exchange 2000 Server

1. Create a new folder on the computer that does not have Exchange 2000 installed on that computer.
2. Copy the Eseutil.exe, Ese.dll, Jcb.dll, Exosal.dll, and Exchmem.dll files from the Exchange 2000 server's Drive:\Exchsrvr\Bin folder to the new folder that you created.
3. Open a command prompt, and change directory to the new folder that contains the Eseutil.exe and Ese.dll files.
4. Run eseutil from this folder against any databases copied over from the Exchange 2000 computer.

Note If the language locale setting in Exchange Server does not match the language locale setting of the computer without Exchange server where you run Eseutil, you receive the following error message when you run Eseutil:

Exchange Server 2003

1. Create a new folder on the computer that does not have Exchange Server 2003 installed.
2. Copy the Eseutil.exe, Ese.dll, Jcb.dll, Exosal.dll, and Exchmem.dll files from the Exchange Server 2003 computer's Drive:\Exchsrvr\Bin folder to the new folder that you created.
3. At a command prompt, change directory to the new folder.
4. Run the eseutil command from this folder against any databases that were copied from the Exchange Server 2003 computer.

Note If the language locale setting in Exchange Server does not match the language locale setting of the computer without Exchange server where you run Eseutil, you receive the following error message when you run Eseutil:

Exchange Server 2007

1. Create a new folder on the computer that does not have Exchange Server 2007 installed.
2. Copy the Eseutil.exe, Ese.dll, Jcb.dll, and Exchmem.dll files from the Exchange Server 2007 computer's Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Bin folder to the new folder that you created.
3. At a command prompt, change the directory to the new folder.
4. Run the eseutil command from this folder against any databases that were copied from the Exchange Server 2007 computer.