UPDATE: We have now released the hotfix that corrects this issue for Exchange 2003 SP2. The article is: 930241 The Exchange 2003 database does not mount, and event IDs 9518 and 9519 are logge...
Updated Jul 01, 2019
Version 2.0
Blog Post
I totally agree, MS has screwed up once again.
"I've got a few clients happily on Exchange 2000 and one migrating off of Exchange 5.5 and even though the patches are done, you have to pay $4,000 to get them. At the very least, doesn't it make sense for Microsoft to release these Exchange specific patches for these products to keep their customers happy. I usually defend Microsoft to a lot of the Linux/Apple lovers out there but this is a great example where Microsoft could shine by giving these legacy version patches available for free."
totally agree, i needed to migrate a client of mine from Exchange 5.5 to 2003 but i couldn't due to a nice bug in the migration software and Exchange 5.5. The only way to get the hotfix that MS had available was to...oh wait, i couldn't, Exchange 5.5 was end of life so there was "noone available who could send me the patch". So my client is stuck on Exchange 5.5. The only fix was to migrate my Clients to Exchange 2003.
The woman in "customer services" was unable to comprehend that this was in fact the whole reason i was asking for the bloody hotfix in the first place. Utterly useless an no customer service.
Once a piece of software has become end of life MS should just release ALL of the hotfixes regardless of their quality (do microsoft even care about the quality of anything?), you dont support it anyway so if people install the hotfix and it goes wrong it is their own tough luck!
As for this patch MS has released, it is extremely shoddy, i have 1 client currently in a downtime situation because there is no fix thanks to some other crappy patch MS released that does not work once this patch has been installed. You guys need to sort this out. If you want the world to keep trusting your software and shunning the trusted and stable platform known as Linux you have to make your software and patch management a lot better (even though Vista is supposed to be the best desktop os I still had to install 13 patches before the official release date!!) and when you do find problems at least test the patch so you know it works before releasing it.
Utterly rubbish patch management by MS.
"I've got a few clients happily on Exchange 2000 and one migrating off of Exchange 5.5 and even though the patches are done, you have to pay $4,000 to get them. At the very least, doesn't it make sense for Microsoft to release these Exchange specific patches for these products to keep their customers happy. I usually defend Microsoft to a lot of the Linux/Apple lovers out there but this is a great example where Microsoft could shine by giving these legacy version patches available for free."
totally agree, i needed to migrate a client of mine from Exchange 5.5 to 2003 but i couldn't due to a nice bug in the migration software and Exchange 5.5. The only way to get the hotfix that MS had available was to...oh wait, i couldn't, Exchange 5.5 was end of life so there was "noone available who could send me the patch". So my client is stuck on Exchange 5.5. The only fix was to migrate my Clients to Exchange 2003.
The woman in "customer services" was unable to comprehend that this was in fact the whole reason i was asking for the bloody hotfix in the first place. Utterly useless an no customer service.
Once a piece of software has become end of life MS should just release ALL of the hotfixes regardless of their quality (do microsoft even care about the quality of anything?), you dont support it anyway so if people install the hotfix and it goes wrong it is their own tough luck!
As for this patch MS has released, it is extremely shoddy, i have 1 client currently in a downtime situation because there is no fix thanks to some other crappy patch MS released that does not work once this patch has been installed. You guys need to sort this out. If you want the world to keep trusting your software and shunning the trusted and stable platform known as Linux you have to make your software and patch management a lot better (even though Vista is supposed to be the best desktop os I still had to install 13 patches before the official release date!!) and when you do find problems at least test the patch so you know it works before releasing it.
Utterly rubbish patch management by MS.