Article ID: 833893 - Last Review: October 26, 2006 - Revision: 2.2

The Oldest Message Queued performance counter in Exchange 2000 Server displays a very large value when the queue is empty

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SYMPTOMS

When you log instances from the Oldest Message Queued performance counter for the MSExchangeMTA Connections performance object on your Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server computer, you may experience one or both of the following symptoms:

If you use the Windows Performance tool in Microsoft Windows 2000 Server to log these instances, the Windows Performance tool reports very high values. Sometimes, these values may indicate that the oldest messages have been queued for as long as several years.
If you create a program to access the Performance Data Helper API of the Pdh.dll version 5.x redistributable DLL to log these instances, a 0x800007d6 error code is returned.

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CAUSE

This problem occurs if the message transfer agent (MTA) queue does not contain any messages.

When an MTA queue contains a message, the MTA updates a counter with the current date and time stamp. When you add the Oldest Message Queued counter to the Windows Performance tool, the message in the queue continues to age as it sits in the queue. The Oldest Message Queued counter helps you determine how many seconds the message has been in the queue.

If the queue is empty, the performance counter still exists, but the MTA sets its value to zero.

The Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Performance Monitor tool correctly displays this value as zero. However, the Windows Performance tool and Pdh.dll incorrectly display this value as the decimal value of the current sampling time stamp.

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RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the August 2004 Exchange 2000 Server Post-Service Pack 3 update rollup.

For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

870540 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/870540/ ) Availability of the August 2004 Exchange 2000 Server Post-Service Pack 3 update rollup

The English version of this hotfix has the file attributes (or later) that are listed in the following table. The dates and times for these files are listed in coordinated universal time (UTC). When you view the file information, it is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time tool in Control Panel.

Date         Time   Version      Size        File name 
---------------------------------------------------------
20-Jan-2004  00:05  6.0.6559.0   1,798,144   Emsmta.exe 
20-Jan-2004  00:13  6.0.6559.0   32,768      Mtaperf.dll 
19-Jan-2004  22:14                5,621      Mtaperf.h 
20-Jan-2004  00:13               96,078      Mtaperf.ini 
19-Jan-2004  23:55  6.0.6559.0   40,960      X400omv1.dll

Note Because of file dependencies, this hotfix requires Exchange 2000 Server Service Pack 3 (SP3). For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

301378 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301378/ ) XGEN: How to obtain the latest Exchange 2000 Server service pack

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Hotfix Installation Instructions

To install this hotfix, follow these steps:

Stop the Microsoft Exchange Message Transfer Agent service. To do this, type net stop msexchangemta at a command prompt, and then press ENTER.
Install the Exchange2000-KB833893-x86-ENU.exe file.
Unload the current MTA performance counters. To do this, type unlodctr msexchangemta at a command prompt, and then press ENTER.
Load the new MTA performance counter information. To do this, type the following commands at a command prompt, and make sure that you press ENTER after each command:
cd\exchsrvr\bin
lodctr mtaperf.ini
Close the command prompt, and then restart the computer.

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