Deleted Emails Keep Coming Back in their Source Folders

[mohdfirozali]

Hi Team,

I am assisting a customer who is running Exchange Server 2016 CU11 - Version 15.1 ‎(Build 1591.10)‎  and is having issue in deleting emails from the email accounts on the server.

The deleted emails re-appear in the folders they were deleted from, tried permanently deleting the emails from OWA & Outlook but that doesn't help.

The Issue is affecting multiple users on the Exchange Server.

- Have done following troubleshooting :

- Confirmed there is no Litigation hold in place

- Advise User to delete email account from all the devices and use OWA 

- Purged all the deleted Items

Any further help in getting this sorted would be highly appreciated.

Thanks

[#2]

Hello Mohd,

This sounds a bit like database corruption, could you please run the following command to get the status of the database?
You will need to bring down the databases (dismount) so make sure you do this outside of business hours.

Get-MailboxDatabase | Dismount-Database

Get-MailboxDatabase -Status | % { eseutil /mh $_.edbfilepath }

Get-MailboxDatabase | Mount-Database

[#3]

@BemmelenPatrickHi, thanks for your response, please see the output from the command below:

[PS] C:\Windows\system32>Get-MailboxDatabase -Status | % { eseutil /mh $_.edbfilepath }

Extensible Storage Engine Utilities for Microsoft(R) Exchange Server

Version 15.01

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Initiating FILE DUMP mode...

Database: E:\Databases\Mailbox database.edb

DATABASE HEADER:

Checksum Information:

Expected Checksum: 0x7601f2bb

Actual Checksum: 0x7601f2bb

Fields:

File Type: Database

Checksum: 0x7601f2bb

Format ulMagic: 0x89abcdef

Engine ulMagic: 0x89abcdef

Format ulVersion: 0x620,20,0 (attached by 0)

Engine ulVersion: 0x620,60,120 (efvCurrent = 9040)

Created ulVersion: 0x620,20

DB Signature: Create time:11/06/2018 20:35:42.805 Rand:269668576 Computer:

cbDbPage: 32768

dbtime: 1197083150 (0x475a0a0e)

State: Clean Shutdown

Log Required: 0-0 (0x0-0x0)

Log Committed: 0-0 (0x0-0x0)

Log Recovering: 0 (0x0)

Log Consistent: 0 (0x0)

GenMax Creation: 00/00/1900 00:00:00.000 LOC

Shadowed: Yes

Last Objid: 376339

Scrub Dbtime: 0 (0x0)

Scrub Date: 00/00/1900 00:00:00.000 LOC

Repair Count: 0

Repair Date: 00/00/1900 00:00:00.000 LOC

Old Repair Count: 0

Last Consistent: (0xB1189,D8,B84) 06/12/2020 19:15:01.869 UTC

Last Attach: (0xB0E75,2,268) 06/11/2020 05:53:31.316 UTC

Last Detach: (0xB1189,D8,B84) 06/12/2020 19:15:01.869 UTC

Last ReAttach: (0x9C688,2,268) 04/17/2020 02:54:29.834 UTC

Dbid: 1

Log Signature: Create time:11/06/2018 20:35:42.399 Rand:3444012206 Computer:

OS Version: (6.2.9200 SP 0 NLS ffffffff.ffffffff)

Previous Full Backup:

Log Gen: 0-0 (0x0-0x0)

Mark: (0x0,0,0)

Mark: 00/00/1900 00:00:00.000 LOC

Previous Incremental Backup:

Log Gen: 0-0 (0x0-0x0)

Mark: (0x0,0,0)

Mark: 00/00/1900 00:00:00.000 LOC

Previous Copy Backup:

Log Gen: 640531-640634 (0x9c613-0x9c67a) - OSSnapshot

Mark: (0x9C67A,3B,4B)

Mark: 04/17/2020 02:33:01.317 UTC

Previous Differential Backup:

Log Gen: 0-0 (0x0-0x0)

Mark: (0x0,0,0)

Mark: 00/00/1900 00:00:00.000 LOC

Current Full Backup:

Log Gen: 0-0 (0x0-0x0)

Mark: (0x0,0,0)

Mark: 00/00/1900 00:00:00.000 LOC

Current Shadow copy backup:

Log Gen: 0-0 (0x0-0x0)

Mark: (0x0,0,0)

Mark: 00/00/1900 00:00:00.000 LOC

cpgUpgrade55Format: 0

cpgUpgradeFreePages: 0

cpgUpgradeSpaceMapPages: 0

ECC Fix Success Count: none

Old ECC Fix Success Count: none

ECC Fix Error Count: none

Old ECC Fix Error Count: none

Bad Checksum Error Count: none

Old bad Checksum Error Count: none

Last Database Maintenance Finish Date: 00/00/1900 00:00:00.000 LOC

Current Database Maintenance Start Date: 11/11/2018 21:16:12.498 UTC

Highest Continuous Database Maintenance Page: 0

Highest Database Maintenance Page: 0

Database Header Flush Signature: Create time:06/12/2020 19:15:01.869 Rand:3989111999 Computer:

Flush Map Header Flush Signature: Create time:00/00/1900 00:00:00.000 Rand:0 Computer:

Operation completed successfully in 0.93 seconds.

[#4]

The database seems to be in order because of the Clean Shutdown state.
Are all the Exchange services running, and in particular the Mailbox Assistent service?
This service applies the retention tags and processes all mailbox operations within your Exchange server.
Also, could you tell me a bit more about your environment, like for instance, are you using a DAG setup?

[#5 · Accepted solution]

@BemmelenPatrick  

Yes, I have checked the services earlier and they appeared to be running perfectly. MFA was doing its job and there were no retention policies to put a hold on emails.

Apparently, the dismount and remount of the database along with a clean restart of the server have fixed the issue for me.

Thanks for your help anyway. :) 

[#6]

Glad I could help you, have a nice day!