We've spent soooo much time playing with the indexes I just want to go for the low-tech solution now.

To delete an archive, we right-click on it under evsite - Archives - Exchange Mailbox - A users --> L users, then right-click on the user's name and select Delete? That doesn't delete anyone else's archives, right?

Our retention period in EV is 14 days. Do you mean I can't create a new archive for the user until that time has passed?!

Sorry if this sounds simplistic. Bit fed-up with the errors and stress to be honest.

14 days retention? thats bizarro!
Anywho, if you want to post some of the indexing errors, can take a look for you, when an index fails repeatedly, its usually due to Opportunistic Locking or Anti Virus or something such as disk corruption or network connectivity that causes all these issues.

If you can move them to a loca drive and see if that helps some and make sure its excluded from AV, things may tend to stabailize after a final rebuild.

But really Gertjan is right, Disable the mailboxes for archiving, export to a PST file, delete the archive, then re-enable the user which will created a new archive then import the PST file....however if its an actual item thats messing the index up, this won't solve your problem

After the user's archive is deleted, they will be left with a lot of orphaned shortcuts. Is there an easy way/util for the user themselves to delete them? Is there any way to recreate shortcuts in this case?

We've been trying to fix these indexing errors for a long time. With and without support help. Started with a disk error on our Centera. Deleting and attempting rebuilding didn't work, or changing from structured to unstructured, or running Evsvr, etc etc. It's only two users out of a few thousand so we need this sorted the quickest, easiest and lowest risk way. We're using Centeras so running a backup to tape before experimenting isn't exactly an option.

These popup every few hours. The user has no Archive Explorer contents, only the shortcuts work.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Enterprise Vault
Event Category: Index Server
Event ID: 7292
Date:  04/07/2011
Time:  13:13:33
User:  N/A
Computer: EV1

Description:
The index volume has been marked as failed.
Index Volume: 17AF253FFF2A2124DBB1CC1C9BBC7DA1B1110000evsrv01/Volume:4558 (A User)
Index Volume Path: X:\VaultIndexes\index2\17AF253FFF2A2124DBB1CC1C9BBC7DA1B1110000evsrv01
Reference: Too many consecutive failed items
           
 
Due to errors accessing the index volume it has been marked as 'failed' to prevent further errors.  The index volume will remain inaccessible until it has been repaired.

"Too many consecutive failed items"

Check out his post by Scanner:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/index-volume-has-been-marked-failed

It will solve the issue of a dodgy index, but it is likely that you have a bigger issue, that could be fixed with a EVSVR or pre 8 equivalent.

That posting is pretty much spot on, as in the "index volume has been marked as failed", in that it will mark an index failed after 100 items have consecutively failed to index.

You can use a different combination of values to just get the index built,

PoisonPillCount = 1

MaxConsecutivePoisonPillItems = 0

This will just run through the rebuild, and never hit the Max items.

Ideally you'd want to find out why these items are failing to be indexed as that's the crux of the matter. I would have thought a DTRACE of the Indexing elements when doing a rebuild on this faulty index should show what item(s) it's falling over on - it then should be a case of finding them (but this isn't that easy if you are storing your .DVS* files on a Centera partition)......

So I exported the user's archive to PST A, disabled the user in EV, deleted their archive (it went within a few hours), did a search in Outlook to find the shortcuts by messageclass and moved them to PST B just in case, then re-enabled the user and imported PST A using the GUI PST import wizard (no shortcuts) into their new archive (checked by archive id that it really was a new one). I waited a day between each step.

Now they get a "the handle is invalid - try again, contact your ev administrator" error in the archive explorer in Oulook 2003 when they try to open any archived item in any folder.

Any ideas? Now I'm really fed up with EV.

Thanks.

Have you tried the tweaks within this technote?
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH60452
 

But luckily it doesn't seem to matter. Today she's not getting that message anymore and her archive is working.

High 5!

Mark a solution dude.