XCON: NDR Not Received When Sending to Bad PAB Entry

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This article was previously published under Q177867

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SYMPTOMS

When a Microsoft Exchange user sends a message to a recipient in his or her Personal Address Book (PAB), the user does not receive a non-delivery report (NDR) if the PAB entry is invalid. This problem only occurs in the following circumstance:

The message has been addressed to an Exchange user in another Microsoft Exchange site whose address is in the originator's PAB. The PAB entry has become invalid either because they have been deleted from the system or their original site no longer exists in the Microsoft Exchange organization.
The connector that routes this message is a X.400 Connector configured as 1984.
The connector does not have any Connected Sites information.

The message to the invalid PAB entry can be tracked by setting the X.400 Service category of the MSExchangeMTA to Maximum logging in the Exchange Administrator program. By looking for the 271 and 272 events in the Windows NT Event Viewer Application log, you see that the message is sent to the destination Exchange message transfer agent (MTA) successfully, a 271 event, then the resulting NDR from this system is received, a 272 event, and finally the MTA passes this on to the Exchange information store, another 271 event. However, the originator of the message does not receive the NDR.

If you turn on maximum logging for the information store, specifically:

   MSExchangeISPriv/Transport Sending & Transport Delivering
   MSExchangeISPriv/Transport/General/<all categories>

you see the following error in the Event Log:

   Event ID : 2026
   Source : MS Exchange Private
   Type : Information
   Category : Transport
   Description : The delivery of a report failed due to error 00000BB8.
   The report has been deleted.

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CAUSE

The MTA was not correctly handling Distinguished Name (DN) addresses. The MTA now checks these before sending and will NDR the message back to the originator with the following diagnostic information:

   The recipient could not be transferred because it could not be
   downgraded.

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WORKAROUND

The workaround for this is to use versions of the MTA greater than or equal to the following:

Exchange 4.0 : 996.56
Exchange 5.0 : 1459.72
Exchange 5.5 : 2110.00

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STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server version 4.0. This problem has been corrected in the latest U.S. Service Pack for Microsoft Exchange Server version 4.0. For information on obtaining the Service Pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

S E R V P A C K

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.0. This problem has been corrected in the latest U.S. Service Pack for Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.0. For information on obtaining the Service Pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

S E R V P A C K

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5. This problem has been corrected in the latest U.S. Service Pack for Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5. For information on obtaining the Service Pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

S E R V P A C K

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APPLIES TO

Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0 Standard Edition
Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0 Standard Edition
Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 Standard Edition

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kbqfe kbhotfixserver kbbug kbfix KB177867

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Retired KB Content Disclaimer

This article was written about products for which Microsoft no longer offers support. Therefore, this article is offered "as is" and will no longer be updated.

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