The IMAP4 service stops responding when you try to restart it and stops responding to client requests

On a heavily loaded Exchange 2000 Server public folder server, the Microsoft Exchange Internet Message Access Protocol 4 (IMAP4) service may stop responding to client requests. You may experience one or more of the following symptoms:

• Microsoft Outlook Express or other IMAP4 clients receive error messages similar to the following when they try to list public folders:
  Your Server has not responded within 60 seconds.
• The Information Store process (Store.exe) uses an excessive amount of memory.
• Events similar to the following appear in the Application log of the Event Viewer:
  Event Category: Performance
  Event ID: 9582
  Type: Error
  Description: The virtual memory necessary to run your Exchange server is fragmented in such a way that normal operation may begin to fail. It is highly recommended that you restart all Exchange services to correct this issue.
  
  For more information, click http://search.support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1.
• When you try to stop the Exchange IMAP4 service, or restart the server, the IMAP4 service stops responding (hangs).

This problem may occur if the IMAP4 service assigns a value of 0xFFFF for the crowTotal field in the EcQueryRows function. This allocates memory in 9 megabyte (MB) portions as IMAP4 responds to client requests. Because of this, on a heavily loaded server, memory may become fragmented or exhausted.

To resolve this problem, the value for the crowTotal field has been changed from 0xFFFF to 0x800.

Cumulative Rollup Information

To resolve this problem, obtain the September 2003 Exchange 2000 Server Post-Service Pack 3 (SP3) Rollup. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Hotfix Information

A supported hotfix is available from Microsoft. However, this hotfix is intended to correct only the problem that is described in this article. Apply this hotfix only to systems that are experiencing this specific problem.

If the hotfix is available for download, there is a "Hotfix download available" section at the top of this Knowledge Base article. If this section does not appear, submit a request to Microsoft Customer Service and Support to obtain the hotfix.

Note If additional issues occur or if any troubleshooting is required, you might have to create a separate service request. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for this specific hotfix. For a complete list of Microsoft Customer Service and Support telephone numbers or to create a separate service request, visit the following Microsoft Web site: Note The "Hotfix download available" form displays the languages for which the hotfix is available. If you do not see your language, it is because a hotfix is not available for that language.
The English version of this fix 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. Note Because of file dependencies, this update requires Exchange 2000 Server Service Pack 3 (SP3).

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

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.