How to change the Exchange 2000 SMTP Mailroot directory location

This article describes how to change the Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Mailroot Directory location. When messages arrive at the Exchange 2000 Server through the SMTP service, the data is written to the hard disk as an .eml file. By default, these files are stored on the drive:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\Mailroot folder on the same partition on which Exchange 2000 Server is installed.

In some scenarios, such as when you configure a bridgehead server, you can increase the performance of the Exchange 2000 Server if you move the SMTP Mailroot directory to a different hard disk or partition.

To relocate the Mailroot directory, perform the following steps:

1. Install the Microsoft Windows 2000 Support Tools on your client computer.
   
   Note It is not necessary to install the Windows 2000 Support Tools on the Exchange 2000 server.
2. Stop all of the Exchange services and Internet Information Service services (IIS) on the Exchange 2000 server that you want to change.
3. Explore the installation drive and create a backup copy of the Program Files\Exchsrvr\Mailroot directory.
   
   Important Ensure that you perform this step before you proceed.
4. Move the VSI 1 directory (and all subfolders and content) under drive:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\Mailroot to the location that you want.
   
   Note Do not move the actual Mailroot directory itself.
5. Register the Adsiedit.dll file by using Regsvr32. To do so, perform the following steps:
   1. Click Start, and then click Run.
   2. In the Open box, type the following line (with the quotation marks), and then click OK:
      regsvr32 "drive:\Program Files\Support Tools\adsiedit.dll"
6. Open a new Microsoft Management Console (MMC), and then add the ADSI Edit snap-in.Warning If you use the ADSI Edit snap-in, the LDP utility, or any other LDAP version 3 client, and you incorrectly modify the attributes of Active Directory objects, you can cause serious problems. These problems may require you to reinstall Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, or both Windows and Exchange. Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems that occur if you incorrectly modify Active Directory object attributes can be solved. Modify these attributes at your own risk.
   
   
7. On the Action menu, click Connect To.
8. Click Naming Context, click Configuration Container in the Naming Context list, and then click OK.
9. Navigate to the following Active Directory container in the Configuration Container:
   CN=Configuration,CN=Services,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=OrganizationName,CN=Administrative Groups,CN=AdminGroupName,CN=Servers,CN=Servername,CN=Protocols,CN=SMTP,CN=1
10. Right-click the CN=1 object, and then click Properties.
11. In the Select which properties to view list, click Both.
12. Adjust the paths of the following attributes, and then click Set:
    msExchSmtpBadMailDirectory
    msExchSmtpPickupDirectory
    msExchSmtpQueueDirectory
13. Wait for Active Directory replication to replicate these changes to the rest of the forest (or at least to the domain controllers and global catalog servers that your Exchange 2000 computer is referencing).
14. Start only the Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service. This procedure copies the paths that you have changed from Active Directory into the metabase. In less than one minute after initialization, you notice three event ID: 1005 event ID messages in the Event Viewer (Source: MSExchangeMU, Category: General). This indicates that the paths in the metabase have updated successfully.
    
    Note To see these event ID messages, diagnostics logging for Directory Service to Metabase replication must be enabled for the MSExchangeMU service before you start the Exchange System Attendant service. Also, the diagnostics logging level must be set to Maximum. To enable diagnostics logging and to set the logging level to Maximum, follow these steps:
    1. Start Exchange System Manager.
    2. Make sure that you can view administrative groups in Exchange System Manager. To do this, right-click your organization, click Properties, and then click to select the Display administrative groups check box if it is not already selected.
    3. Expand Administrative Groups, expand Servers, right-click the Exchange server, and then click Properties.
    4. Click the Diagnostics Logging tab.
    5. In the Services list, click MSExchangeMU.
    6. Under Logging Level, click Maximum. By default, the logging level is set to None.
    7. Click OK.
15. Restart the Exchange 2000 Server computer.

For more information, refer to the white paper entitled, "Microsoft Exchange 2000 Internals: Quick Tuning Guide", which is available at the following Microsoft Web site: For more information about optimization, visit the following Microsoft Web site: