SBS 2008 – Error: An Exchange 2007 server on which an address list service is not active cannot be found

We were in the process of correcting what turned out to be a clerical error for a client’s user where their name was spelled incorrectly.

To do so, we change the Alias properties for the wrong user account to change the default e-mail address for the user. NameOLD@ or something along those lines will be used.

While attempting to make these changes on an SBS 2008 box with Exchange 2007 SP2 installed, we received the following error:

Microsoft Exchange Error

The following error(s) occurred while saving changes:

set-mailbox FAILED

Error: An Exchange 2007 server on which an address list service is active cannot be found.

A quick search turned up the following culprit on the SBS 2008 box:

Microsoft Exchange System Attendant: Status = OFF

We right clicked on the Attendant service and started it without a hiccup.

Once the service was back online we were able to make the necessary profile changes to allow us to create the new user profile with the existing e-mail addresses.

From there, we go on to export their Exchange mailbox to PST and modify the redirected folders folder of the existing user profile to allow Read/Write to the new profile.

We will be digging into the logs to see if we can find the source of the service turning off. We will also be applying Exchange 2007 SP3 on this particular SBS VM pretty soon.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer