To make a long story short I had a default Public Folder Store break.  Forcing Exchange 2003 to re-build it is not as hard as one might think.  In fact it only took me only 30 minutes to do so this morning over a VPN/Terminal Services connection.

Before doing this remember that you are going to LOSE ALL DATA IN YOUR PUBLIC FOLDERS!!!! Do this at your own risk, I wash my hands of anything bad that may happen, etc. :-)

  1. Stop all Exchange services
  2. Delete pub1.edb and pub1.stm in \Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\
  3. Start all Exchange services and via the Exchange System Manager MMC attempt to mount your public folder store.  You should get a warning message.  READ IT! Click "OK".
  4. Now follow the instructions here...http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822444/

( the steps here were inspired from the techtarget article here (login required): http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid43_gci1057114,00.html?bucket=ETA )