Exchange 2003 Wrong Mapi32.dll

We are not sure how it happened, but a client that is still running Exchange 2003 experienced an issue today where System Manager could not be started. When you started it, there was an error about the incorrect version of mapi32.dll. However, to the best of our knowledge the version of mapi32.dll had not changed.

I did notice that mapisvc.inf had changed this morning and I suspect that was the cause of the wrong mapi32.dll being used. However, we don't know why that file was updated.


The fix was relatively easy I copied mapi32.dll from C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\bin to C:\Windows\System32. This is done normally as part of the Exchange 2003 installation process.

Full text of the error was:

Exchange detected that "c:\windows\system32=MAPI32.DLL" is not the
correct version required to run Exchange System Manger or Exchange Server
2003. This may cause failures in Exchange System Manager, affect
availability of your server, or both. For more information see Microsoft
Knowledge Base article Q266418 at http://support/microsoft.com

 In most cases, this error is the result of installing Outlook on an Exchange 2003 server and the Outlook mapi32.dll overwrites that from Exchange. That was not the case here.

For more information:

• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/266418