Steps to enable Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 Calendar Store tracing

Source: Microsoft Support

RAPID PUBLISHING ARTICLES PROVIDE INFORMATION DIRECTLY FROM WITHIN THE MICROSOFT SUPPORT ORGANIZATION. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN IS CREATED IN RESPONSE TO EMERGING OR UNIQUE TOPICS, OR IS INTENDED SUPPLEMENT OTHER KNOWLEDGE BASE INFORMATION.

For most issues related to Outlook and Exchange calendaring, you will need to gather and provide a lot of data for the Microsoft support engineer to effectively troubleshoot the issue. This is primarily due to the complexity of the Calendar feature set in Microsoft Office Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server, and the varied scenarios and products that touch the data on a calendar.

For more information about the complete set of data that needs to be gathered to troubleshoot calendar issues, see�the following TechNet�article:

Working with support to troubleshoot the Outlook calendar in an Exchange environment (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc891495.aspx)

Part of the data that needs to be gathered is an Exchange Store log for a user. This article provides detailed steps on how to enable Exchange Store logging for troubleshooting issues related to an Outlook Calendar.

Important�The intent of this article is to simplify the calendar logging process when you work with the support team at Microsoft. It is not intended to provide you complete information to perform store logging on your own. There is a risk of causing performance problems on your Exchange server if logging is not enabled correctly, which is why you need to work with the support team during this process.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2000 have the ability to trace calendar activities that happen in the store. This trace is done through an Exchange Store Tracing feature and the tracing can be done on a per-user or a per-server basis.

Enabling Exchange Store Tracing

This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

322756�How to back up and restore the registry in Windows

The following steps explain how this tracing feature can be enabled when you work with a Microsoft support engineer on a support case related to calendar issues.

1. Identify the user whose mailbox will be traced by this process.
   
   Note For performance considerations, you should always identify one user who is encountering the issue and then trace their mailbox using per-user tracing.
2. Obtain the appropriate store.ttd file from your Microsoft support engineer.
   
   In order to use Store tracing, you need to use a store.ttd file designed specifically for logging Calendar events. The store.ttd file is not a publicly available file because of possible Exchange Store performance problems if it is implemented incorrectly.
3. Place the store.ttd file in the \Exchsrvr\Bin directory on the Exchange server containing the mailbox of the user experiencing calendar issues. By default, the \Bin folder is in the following folder path:
   
   \Program Files\Exchsrvr\Bin
4. Enable overall tracing using the following registry data:
   
   Registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem
   DWORD: Enable Tracing
   Value: 1
   
   To do this, follow these steps:
   
   a. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
   b. Locate and then click to select the following registry key:
   
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem
   c. After you select the key that is specified in step b, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click DWORD value.
   d. Type Enable Tracing, and then press ENTER.
   e. Right-click Enable Tracing, and then click Modify.
   f. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
   g. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.
5. Use a tool like ADSIEdit to determine the Active Directory legacyExchangeDN value of the user identified in Step 1. For example:
   
   /o=Contoso/ou=Site1/cn=Recipients/cn=1234
   
   Please see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article on Windows Server 2003 support tools, one of which is ADSIEdit:
   
   892777 Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 Support Tools
6. Add the following data to enable per-user tracing for the identified user.
   
   Key: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem
   REG_SZ: Trace User LegacyDN
   Value: <user legacyDN> (for example: /o=Contoso/ou=Site1/cn=Recipients/cn=1234)
   
   To do this, follow these steps:
   
   a. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
   b. Locate and then click to select the following registry key:
   
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem
   c. After you select the key that is specified in step b, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click String Value.
   d. Type Trace User LegacyDN, and then press ENTER.
   e. Right-click Trace User LegacyDN, and then click Modify.
   f. In the Value data box, type the Legacy Exchange DN of the user (see step 5 above), and then click OK.
   g. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.
7. Add a test appointment to the user's Calendar folder to ensure Store logging is working.
   
   This is a very important step as you do not want to wait for the next occurrence of the problem only to find out that Store logging wasn�t enabled correctly.
   
   If Store logging is working you will find a Store.log file located in the \Program Files\Exchsrvr\Bin directory. You can open this log file using any text editor (for example, Notepad) to check for an entry related to this test appointment.

Managing the size of the Store.log file while you wait to reproduce the problem

If the problem does not readily reproduce within a day or two of enabling store logging, you should consider checking on the size of the store.log file. There are no hard-fast rules on how large to let the file grow, but you might consider 200 MB as a size at which you want to archive the each store.log file and then start logging again with a new store.log file.

Note You will want to archive the store.log file only when you know the user or their delegate are not actively working with meetings in the user�s Calendar folder.

Use the following process to keep the size of the store.log file to a manageable size.

1. When the size of the store.log file hits 200 MB (for example), temporarily stop store tracing.
   
   To do this, follow these steps:
   
   a. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
   b. Locate and then click to select the following registry key:
   
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem
   c. Right-click Enable Tracing, and then click Modify.
   d. In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
   e. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.
2. Rename the Store.log file to Store_<username>_<current date_time>.log. For example:
   
   Store_guidopica_05-08-2009_1050am.log
3. Re-enable store tracing.
   
   To do this, follow these steps:
   
   a. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
   b. Locate and then click to select the following registry key:
   
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem
   c. Right-click Enable Tracing, and then click Modify.
   d. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
   e. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.

Stopping Exchange Store Tracing

Once the calendar issue has occurred while Store tracing was enabled you can use the following steps to disable Store tracing.

1. Disable tracing using the following registry data:
   
   Key: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem
   DWORD: Enable Tracing
   Value: 0
   
   To do this, follow these steps:
   
   a. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
   b. Locate and then click to select the following registry key:
   
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem
   c. Right-click Enable Tracing, and then click Modify.
   d. In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
   e. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.
2. Remove the Trace User LegacyDN string value data under the following registry key.
   
   Registry subkey: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem
   REG_SZ: Trace User LegacyDN
   
   To do this, follow these steps:
   
   a. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
   b. Locate and then click to select the following registry key:
   
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem
   c. Right-click Trace User LegacyDN, and then click Modify.
   d. In the Value data box, delete the Legacy Exchange DN of the user and then click OK.
   e. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.
3. After you have stopped Store tracing, collect the Store.log file located in the \Exchsrvr\Bin directory. By default, the \Bin folder is in the following folder path:
   
   \Program Files\Exchsrvr\Bin
   

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