The Exchange System Attendant service starts to quickly increase its memory usage in Exchange 2000 Server

On a computer that is running Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server, you experience the following symptom:

The Exchange System Attendant service (Mad.exe) starts to quickly increase its memory usage. After about 12 to 24 hours, you may have to restart the Exchange System Attendant service to resolve the problem.

This problem may occur when the Exchange System Attendant service tries to publish free/busy information in the Exchange 2000 Server public folder store. Specifically, this problem occurs if the following conditions are true:

• The Exchange System Attendant service opens a free/busy message to update relevant information and to then save that message to the public folder store.
• After the Exchange System Attendant service has opened the free/busy message, but before the Exchange System Attendant service saves that message, another process modifies the free/busy information in that message.

In this situation, the Exchange System Attendant service does not successfully save the message. Additionally, because of how this error condition is handled, the thread that handles this message goes into an infinite loop. The Exchange System Attendant service leaks memory for every iteration of this loop.

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.

Prerequisites

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

Restart requirement

You do not have to restart the computer after you apply this hotfix.

Hotfix replacement information

This hotfix does not replace any other hotfixes.

File information

The English version of this hotfix has the file attributes (or later file attributes) 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.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server.