Share via

Exchange Server Troubleshooting: Event ID 9519 & 0x80004005 when try to Mount Exchange Database

  • Article

Introduction

Every administrator’s worst nightmare is when an Exchange mailbox database will not mount. This can be related to a few things, such as:

  • Low disk space on the volume holding the Exchange mailbox database.
  • Missing log files.
  • Not all the Exchange services started. The mailbox database won’t mount because the service is not started.

These are some common issues. However, you may face a more serious issue, such as it logs an error in the event logs, with Event ID 9519, saying “Exchange is unable to mount the database that you specified. Specified database…..” When this happens, you also notice that the sign in into the server takes a very long time.

Common Reasons behind the Error

The error may occur due to the following reasons:

  • The Exchange server was incorrectly removed from the Exchange Server Group.
  • The Exchange Server Group does not have the correct permissions - maybe the group policy assigned to them is too strict or they do not have the “Managing and security log policy” assigned.
  • The Domain Controller policy in group policy is blank or missing.

Another scenario is that you are installing new servers and put in the wrong name while joining the Active Directory domain and it overwrites the current computer account. You then rename it to something else but that object is still failing, or you name it back to its original name but it never gets added back to the Exchange Server Group as Active Directory is now not aware that it’s an Exchange server.

How to Resolve the Error?

Here are some steps you can take to resolve the error:

  • If you are running Exchange 2010, you can open up an elevated Command Prompt and navigate to the Exchange ISO or media and then run “Setup /PrepareAD”. This will restore the configuration in Active Directory.
  • In the Exchange Organizational Unit (OU), double-click the Exchange servers and see if your member server is in the list. If you do not see it, then you can add it and wait for Active Directory replication. Then reboot the Exchange server and see if the error is resolved.
  • Open up Group Policy on the primary Domain Controller and edit the Domain Controllers Policy. Expand local policies and then click on User Rights Assignments.
  • If you look at “Manage auditing and security log”, it should show the Exchange servers group. If not, you need to add it.
  • If the step above has failed, it means the group policy is blank or giving an error when you open it. You need to restore the policy from backup. If you do not have backups, you need to do an authoritative restore of the policy.

Consider a client who’re facing the same scenario. They checked the policy on the Domain Controller GPO but never checked the Exchange servers’ group. They built a new server and did a recovery install of Exchange 2016 and spent hours doing everything. After all this, they find that the same error was still there. Only after adding the server to the Exchange servers group, the error is resolved.

What happens if your server is part of the group and has the correct GPO applied, and you have a working Domain Controller GPO? In this case, you may need to look at the following:

  • Restore the database from backup
  • Run the ESEUTIL
  • Use a third-party application

Backups

Backups are always a sore point in any organization as they either have never done any backups or never attempted restores to see if the data is valid. If this is the case, you have a problem on your hands. Backups are not a discussion for this article, but you do need to talk to the backup team and sort it out.

ESEUTIL

The next thing you can try is using the built-in tool called ESEUTIL. If you are not sure how to work with it, you should either reach out to a senior engineer or to a partner to help you with this.

ESEUTIL can be run with a few commands, such as:

  • ESEUTIL /mh: To check the status of the database.
  • ESEUTIL /r: To perform a soft repair on the database.
  • ESEUTIL /p: To perform a hard recovery.

Third party

Before doing anything with the database or databases, take a backup of the files by copying all the log files and database file, in case you need it. If the above fails or did not help, you then may need to look at a third-party tool, such as the Exchange recovery tool.