Hi Herb,
I am personally thanking all who helped, I appreciate it more than I can say.
heres how it turned out: (and yes semantic database analysis was involved)
After 3 1/2 hours of actual phone time (after 2 hours waiting = 5 1/2 hours
with a phone in my ear) we got it back as far as I can tell. It came down to
running the ntdsutil and then eseutil in a certain sequence. and it recovered.
The same for the exchange database. a specific sequence of eseutil and isinteg
switches, that is not outlined specifically enough in any single KB article
which was found in a message (they called it an object I think, something that
may someday become a KB article?) the pss guy walked me through it and it did
everything it said it would and it is now running again. I had all the pieces
but the ordering was critical.
I don't know how much I lost because it was 3am this morning that I left it with
the disk just churning away (Exchange trying to to catch up perhaps?) But when I
checked my mail today I might have lost the day it crashed but thats all.
Next I move the stuff off this thing and rebuild after a graceful demotion. But
that will wait a few days, I gotta get some sleep.
Thank you all for so much help!