Exchange 2003 (On SBS 2003 R2) problem with OWA: Error 440

I recently had to reanimate a client’s dead SBS server.

The cause of death was a broken registry hive (SOFTWARE).

A repair installation would not work, safe mode would not work, the server simply would not boot. I kept on getting blue screens:

STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0x8092D47F, 0xF6D7892C, 0x00000000)

The last four numbers / addresses vary from boot to boot.

I Googled around for the meaning of the STOP error code and came accross a multitude of articles all suggesting faulty RAM.

I also phoned Microsoft Business Critical Support. They confirmed that it must be a hardware fault.

Needless to say, a test of the RAM using Memtest86+ (http://www.memtest.org/) showed no fault with the RAM.

I installed SBS again (to a separate folder) and the installation completed with no problems.