When there is improper shutdown of the Exchange Server database, the transaction log stream remains attached with it and this situation is called Dirty Shutdown. For those people who do not know its meaning, they should know that in this state the transaction log stream data is not securely committed to the files in the database. If you don’t know how to examine the database state, then you can do the same by making use of the eseutil/ mh command using which you can get all the required information of the database header. Upon starting the database on next time, it fails to mount and the following error message starts blinking on the computer monitor:

“Operation terminated with error -550 JET_errDatabaseDirtyShutdown
Database was not shutdown cleanly
Recovery must first be run to properly complete database operations for the previous shutdown”

The JET_errDatabaseDirtyShutdown error is caused due to the fact when the database becomes inconsistent due to improper shutdown. It does not mean that the database has become corrupted but it requires the log files to be replayed every time. There is another similar error of this kind called JET_errDatabaseInconsistent which is also caused due to the same reason and it holds the same numeric value.

As a result of the JET_errDatabaseDirtyShutdown error, Exchange Server users find it difficult to access any of the files located in its database. When people are unable to view their data and information, it leads to data loss kind of situation because no matter how hard one tries, the database fails to mount and hence the information stored in it becomes inaccessible to its users. To fix this problem, people can make use of running the eseutil /r command that helps in repairing the corrupted database.

It is to be noted that eseutil /p is a kind of hard repair command and it can check for errors up to 4 kilo byte of database. If the errors are found, it deletes them. If you wish to recover the data back then you can make use of Exchange Server Recovery tool that can undelete the information using certain algorithmic methods and powerful scanning techniques that is caused due to the JET_errDatabaseDirtyShutdown error. It can restore all the deleted mailbox items as long as they are not overwritten by the new ones. The interesting thing about this tool is that it supports selective mailbox recovery and works on Exchange Server versions like 2000, 5.5, 2003, 2007 and 2010. It is easy to use and is compatible with all the popular Windows operating systems.