Tanel -- I assume you are running Exchange 2007 since you have a Windows Server 2008 server. There are some differences in the Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2003 mail databases, so maybe GRO is handling Exchange 2003 better. At least in my environment it is.
I have GRO version 8.5.3.32375 installed on a WinXP SP3 32 bit workstation. BESR Desktop version 8.5.3.31483 is also installed on this workstation as well as Outlook 2003. I do not copy the images locally in order to open them with GRO. This is what I do:
- Open a command prompt and temporarily map a drive to the image store location, with the command . pushd \\servername\sharename
- Make note of the drive letter pushed onto the stack and minimize the command prompt window
- Open GRO and open the sv2i file in the target location on the drive just mapped.
- Select all the Versions of the image. In the Backup Date drop down list, select the earliest version of the backup first. That seems to be the version that contains the EIF file the most in my experience.
- Open the Exchange Mail tab and wait for the mailstore to mount. Recover the item(s) needed and close GRO
- In the command prompt enter the command popd to unmap the drive and pop it off the stack.
As a side note, my BESR images use medium compression and they are not encrypted. I can't guarantee this setup will work in anyone else's environment., so glean from it what you will. When I try this with my Exchange 2007images on my 32 bit workstation, I get the standard EIF error when selection the wrong version of the backup. However, when I select what I assume is the correct version, I get the error:
(i) Microsoft Exchange 2007 can only be recovered on a 64 bit operating system, run this software on a system with a 64 bit OS installed I need to test this with a 64 bit workstation, but I find this error more encouraging than the missing EIF error. This tells me that the EIF file was found, and that I need a 64 bit environment in order to get the rest of the recovery process working.
Marco