Exchange 2010: Unable to initialize the Information Store

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Larry McDowell 28 Comments

Problem: Rebooted my Exchange 2010 server and when it came back up the information store wouldn’t mount. Looked in the application log and found the following error:

Unable to initialize the Information Store service because the clocks on the client and server are skewed. This may be caused by a time change either in the client or the server, and may require a reboot of that computer. Verify that your domain is properly configured and is currently online.

Solution:
Found some instructions on the technet website that fixed my problem.

Open a cmd prompt from the Exchange Server as administrator (right mouse click on the command prompt shortcut and select Run as Administrator)
Run this command Net time \\ADServerName /Set
Restart the Microsoft Exchange Active Directory Topology Service

*Important!! You have to restart the Microsoft Exchange Active Directory Topology Service or this fix will not work.. I tried just starting the Information Store service after running the command it it still failed..

Further reference: Technet

28 thoughts on “Exchange 2010: Unable to initialize the Information Store”

Mike Cusumano on November 4, 2012 at 6:41 am said:

Dude, you rule! Thanks!
Azam on December 16, 2012 at 4:15 am said:

your rock!! thanx alot.
RMA on March 1, 2013 at 11:03 pm said:

Thanks, saved my ass
BogosiN on May 23, 2013 at 4:34 am said:

This happened just after I had update the time on my NTP server. First the send connectors between my Ex2k7 and Ex2k10 servers reported authentication errors which was resolved by restarting the servers but after that the information store on the Ex2k7 wouldn’t come up. Serves me right for not looking at the event logs sooner. Mad props!!!
kevin on May 29, 2013 at 2:06 pm said:

excellent blog! thank you sooooo much
Tacos on May 30, 2013 at 5:40 pm said:

Saved the day! Thanks!
Bill on July 20, 2013 at 11:23 am said:

Man, thank you so much, two hours lost until I found this post.
Krzysztof on August 19, 2013 at 7:53 am said:

Brilliant fix, thanks a million!
helped me out on August 29, 2013 at 9:42 am said:

This, too, saved my ass.
Marvin on September 5, 2013 at 8:46 pm said:

Thanks for posting! Saved the day!
Chris on October 4, 2013 at 8:29 am said:

Thanks but this works until I reboot when I then have to run the command again. Any further idea’s?
Gilles on October 7, 2013 at 7:22 am said:

merci

saved our day

just happened after RU7 was applied
Bill on October 24, 2013 at 9:38 pm said:

Worked beautifully. Thanks a lot, quick and easy fix !!!
Manuel on November 28, 2013 at 1:47 pm said:

thank you very much. I could upload it from your explanation uploading Microsoft Exchange Active Directory Topology Service
Billf on January 23, 2014 at 5:45 am said:

worked but why if the times were not skewed did this happen?
Larry McDowell on January 23, 2014 at 8:38 pm said:

Not sure why if the times weren’t skewed. Could be a number of things. Could be an active directory settings issue, network communications or a topology issue… http://www.mountainvistatech.com/2013/10/08/exchange-2010-topology-discovery-failed-error-0x8007077f-v-issue/
Max on March 5, 2014 at 3:36 am said:

This has worked for us. Even though time was not skewed and w32tm /query /status showed that it was synchronizing from a valid source, the IS service would not start and errors would be logged complaining of the clock being skewed. After running the command above and restarting the AD Topology service we were finally able to bring the IS service back up.

Thanks a lot!!!
Larry McDowell on March 6, 2014 at 7:36 pm said:

Glad it worked for you. That’s an interesting variation to my problem. Thanks for sharing.
Jim on March 30, 2014 at 10:34 am said:

This saved me as well, I don’t know why we keep having this same problem whenever the DC’s reboot (usually when we push an update), but I did write a simple batch file for the IS service to restart. In recovery I set it to run the following batch command:

Net time \\ADServerName /Set
net stop MSExchangeADTopology && net start MSExchangeADTopology

Seems to correct itself then.

THANKS Larry!
Benny on March 31, 2014 at 3:35 pm said:

Thank you very much. Happened right after the reboot after Installation of Exchange 2010 SP3 Rollup 5. Time was exactly the same as on the PDC. Your solution solved it.
Larry McDowell on March 31, 2014 at 8:15 pm said:

Glad it worked and thanks for the batch command. An nice addition to the solution as well.
Benzigar on August 28, 2014 at 6:11 am said:

Great! it worked for me too. thanks a lot.

Benzi 🙂
Rick Payton on December 12, 2014 at 7:12 pm said:

Add me to the list of “me too’s” that this fixed worked on. My time skew was all of 3 seconds after a reboot of Exchange 2010 :/
Colin Tyrrell on April 2, 2015 at 12:19 am said:

Superb. And thanks for pointing out the need to restart the topology service 🙂
Larry McDowell on April 8, 2015 at 1:12 pm said:

Great! Glad I could help and thanks for visiting.
Peter on April 10, 2015 at 6:25 am said:

Mate, you are a lifesaver!
Lloyd on February 27, 2016 at 4:47 pm said:

The fix had to be applied after each reboot. Checked and noticed the time was off on the VMware Host server. Once the time was fixed on the VMware host the problem went away.
Kyle on March 16, 2016 at 8:49 am said:

Excellent! This should never happen but it did… I am very thankful it is fixed but any ideas on WHY? it happened? The Time change was 3 days ago… But the problem started today.. Very frustrating! Anyway I know the OP wrote this like 3 years ago but thank you!!!!

28 thoughts on “Exchange 2010: Unable to initialize the Information Store”

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