Very few organizations install Exchange updates the moment they are released. Most wait a few weeks to a month. Some wait much longer, and, with Microsoft’s recent track record with Exchange updates, who can blame them?
So far, Exchange 2010 SP2 Rollup Update 6 looks pretty safe, but it’s only been out for a week. Let’s see how things develop. Here are the problems I’ve seen reported so far.
Exchange 2010 SP2 RU6 Readiness: It depends… See my verdict here.
| Problem Description | Resolution/Comments |
| (Common) Installation fails. Event ID 1603. |
|
| (Common) Error: “Failed to clean up the source mailbox…” after moving mailboxes between databases | This problem actually started with SP2 RU3, but it continues in RU6. The workaround is to manually clean up the old mailbox using the Remove-StoreMailbox cmdlet. |
| (Common) Cannot delete emails in OWA or Outlook 2007 (probably other clients as well) | Problem reported on booking requests, message recall notices, and messages with From fields that use extended character sets. |
| (Common) “From” fields are blank in some emails | Problem appears to be related to extended character sets for some languages. I haven’t seen a solution to this yet. |
| (Uncommon) Installation hangs on removing Exchange files | Uninstall the last installed RU and try again. Or uninstall all previous RUs. |
| (Uncommon) Installation fails: “Control cannot leave a final block” or “Ended prematurely” | No further information |
| (Uncommon) WMI Performance Adapter service terminated… | The solution sounds dubious to me: Reboot server until the events no longer appear in the logs. |
| (Uncommon) “The setting MaxNoOfItemsMove in the Web.Config file was not valid. The previous value was null and has been changed to 1000.” | Problem resolved itself by the value change. Unclear whether the value had to be manually added to the Web.Config file or if the installation made the change automatically. |
| (Uncommon) Outlook 2002/Outlook XP clients break. Outbox inaccessible. | Upgrade clients. Exchange 2010 doesn’t support Outlook 2002/XP. |
| (Uncommon) Installation fails: “An error occurred while writing installation information to the disk. Check to make sure enough disk space is available…” | Uninstall KB2506143 and KB2506146 |
| (Uncommon) Room delegates are unable to approve meeting requests. Error message: “Cannot move the items. Some items cannot be moved. They were either already moved or deleted, or access was denied.” | No known solution at this time. |
I’ll add to the table as I learn more. If you see any other problems and/or solutions related to the installation of Exchange 2010 SP2 RU6/UR6, let us know in the comments section.
Update 2013-02-27: Uh oh! It looks like there might be an RU6 v2 in the works. Who would have guessed that would happen? 
Update 2013-03-11: Maybe I spoke too soon. There should be an RU6 v2 in the works, but I haven’t seen any public acknowledgements from Microsoft about the problem everyone seems to be having with deleting certain emails. Until they fix that, I can’t recommend installing RU6. I guarantee that my users would complain about it almost immediately, and if Exchange looks sloppy and unprofessional, then I look sloppy and unprofessional.
If you want me to email you an update when it looks like RU6 is more-or-less safe to install, just leave your email address here:
hi Jay, we applied RU6 in prod on Feb.14th, and since then we have had about 5-6 reports of users (4500 users total) having issues soft-deleting items in Outlook (2007 client). These users can repro the issue on that same item, but other items delete fine. Hard-delete works fine. Also, some secretaries who are delegates are getting this error for calendar booking accepted items.
The error is “Microsoft Office Outlook: Cannot move the items. Some items cannot be moved. They were either already moved or deleted, or access was denied.”
Thanks,
Doug
Thanks, Doug. I’ll add these to the list.
OT but related to booking requests, I have to set the permissions manually almost every time I create a new room object or change delegates. I’ve taken to assigning a group as the delegate (and setting the permissions for the group via ExFolder) and only changing membership in the group after that.
Guys,
Problem resolved. I uninstall RU6 off of all of my servers over night and this fixed both of my issues. The people that could not delete the messages, can now all delete those problem messages. Also, the issue with the Sent Items not being viewable is also fixed. You have to start outlook with the /cleanviews switch and that resets all the views.
RU6 uninstalls cleanly and takes about 10 minutes to remove plus a reboot. I would suggest everyone roll back.
Thanks,
Kevin
Thanks for the update, Kevin!
Almost as good as a roller coaster!
Jay,
I just installed RU6 in my lab. I don’t seem to have the problem with the delegates not being able to accept/decline meetings for the delegator, but I do have a problem that regardless of which setting I select for Delivery of the meeting request including “My delegates and me” (found on the first page when adding a delegate), the delegator does not get the request. Only the delegate gets it. I haven’t found a fix, but think I will check out RU5v2 instead.
Thanks for all you provide, Jay!
Courtney
You are most welcome, Courtney!
I don’t think the problem with RU6 is that the delegates can’t accept or decline the meeting request, but that they can’t soft delete the request once they’ve responded. It can only be hard deleted. It’s more of a nuisance than a real problem.
As for the delegate of a delegate not receiving booking requests, I believe that is by design. If you delegate access for your own mailbox to another user, that doesn’t give that other user permissions to a resource mailboxes that you might have, so there wouldn’t be much point in them getting booking requests for that resource except as an FYI.
Here’s a scenario: Sarah is a delegate for Room 102. Meeting requests for Room 102 are sent to the resource mailbox and then forwarded to Sarah only sees them because she is a delegate for Room 102. Since delegate permissions aren’t recursive, if Sarah delegates access to her own mailbox and meeting requests to Joe, Joe doesn’t inherit any delegate access to Room 102. In some situations, I can see why you would want delegation to be recursive like that. In very large organizations, though, it could create a chain reaction of meeting requests bouncing all over the place.
Oops! I just realized you were talking about the last item in the list, Courtney!
Yeah, I don’t think many people are having that problem. It might not even be related to RU6. I just included it in case someone else sees the same thing.
We spent about 6 hours on the phone with MS support today with sp2 ru6 (and ru5 apparently) bug. Our cas server would spike to 100% cpu causing access problems to mobile devices and owa mainly. It turns out there is a known issue with a corrupt free/busy attribute that causes the problem. Once it was diagnosed we received an Interim Update to correct the problem. So far it seems to fix the problem.