KB178539 - XCON: How to Adjust Message Time-Outs for the Exchange MTA

Article ID: 178539

Article Last Modified on 2/27/2007

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Standard Edition
Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 Standard Edition

This article was previously published under Q178539

IMPORTANT: This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry

SUMMARY

The Microsoft Exchange Server message transfer agent (MTA) by default will hold messages based on priority for a set amount of time before sending them back to the originator as undeliverable.

These default times include:

   Urgent - 2 days
   Normal - 7 Days
   Non-urgent - 10 days

A new feature of Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 is the ability to adjust these parameters.

MORE INFORMATION

The default message time-out values for the MTA are effective in most usage scenarios of Exchange Server; however, there are times when the Exchange administrator will need to increase the time-out values for slow network links or server outages or to decrease these values in the case of highly important and time-sensitive material.

To adjust these settings, do the following:

WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

Open the Microsoft Windows NT registry using the REGEDIT utility.

Go to the following key:

      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
      \MSExchangeMTA\Parameters

Select Edit.
Select New, and then DWORD Value.
Make a new entry for each one of the following time-out categories:
Message timeout (urgent), minutes
Message timeout (normal), minutes
Message timeout (non-urgent), minutes
These must be typed exactly as they appear above. They can be individually entered or all used.
After the new key is created, enter the desired time-out in minutes. This can be anything from 1 to 65536.

For example, to set normal messages to time out in 14 days, enter 20160.

The maximum time-out value is 45 days.

Additional query words: time-out expiration expiry

Keywords: kbinfo kbusage KB178539