Recovery stuck! Help!

Question

Hello
We've had a power shortage and our server crashed. That put our Exchange database in dirty shutdown. So I've used eseutil /p to repair it:
Checking database integrity.
The database is not up-to-date. This operation may find that this database is corrupt because data from the log files has yet to be placed in the database.
To ensure the database is up-to-date please use the 'Recovery' operation.
Scanning Status (% complete)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|
Scanning the database.
Scanning Status (% complete)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|
Repairing damaged tables.
Scanning Status (% complete)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|
Deleting unicode fixup table.
Deleting MSObjids.
Deleting MSysLocales.
And it's stuck there...
What can I do? I've got over 50 employees waiting for their emails since this morning.
Thank you :)

Answer 1

1. Be really really patient since the repair process can take a very long time dependent upon the state of the DB.
2. Once mounted again I would highly recommend that you create a new mailbox DB and then move the mailboxes from the repaired EDB into the NEW mailbox EDB.  While the repaired EDB may operate without issue, historically once a DB has been hard repaired
with a /P you want to get your mailboxes off of it ASAP.  
QUESTION:  Before running the /P did you make a MASTER copy of the EDB?
ALTERNATE RECOVERY METHOD
If you really need to get mail up and running and cannot wait any longer then;
You can STOP the repair process and then create a dial-tone database to get your users up a running right away and then once up and operational you can then use a WORKING copy of EDB to do data recovery via  Lucid8's DigiScope
http://www.lucid8.com/product/digiscope.asp to open that offline WORKING copy EDB to recover any missing/delta data into the production exchange server.  To do this you would
1. AFTER YOU MAKE A MASTER COPY OF THE EDB then rename or remove the EDB and associated log files. 
Personally I would recommend that you just rename the directory/folder they are in i.e. if they are located in  "U:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Mailbox\Users_A-F"  you would rename the "Users_A-F" to say "Old_Users_A-F" and then
create a new "Users_A-F" directory
2. Then go into the EMC and mount the DB
3. Exchange will tell you that it cannot find the database files and that if you continue you it will create a new blank database
4. Say yes and a new blank database is created and now users can send and receive new emails,
HOWEVER they will not have any of their historical email (yet)
5. Now open that WORKING copy database using Lucid8's DigiScope
http://www.lucid8.com/product/digiscope.asp and restore the historical data into the production server.
NOTE 1: Since the DB is damaged or missing log files DigiScope will give you the option of REPAIRING the database or to do a FORENSIC Mount.  Always try the Forensic Mount first since if possible it will just open the DB so that you
can do a recovery without having to wait for a lengthy repair process.
NOTE 2 : restoration of data from the WORKING copy via DigiScope can be done while users are working within Outlook.
Troy Werelius
www.Lucid8.com
Search, Recover, & Extract Mailboxes, Folders, & Email Items from Offline EDB's and Live Exchange Servers or Import/Migrate direct from Offline EDB to Any Production Exchange Server, even cross version i.e. 2003 --> 2007 --> 2010 with Lucid8's
DigiScope