Take a Chat Community Offline

When you stop a chat community, you disconnect the chat clients that are currently connected to the community and prevent the community from accepting new connections. You should stop Chat Service only if you need to shut down for maintenance, if you need to make more server memory available for other Windows 2000 services or applications, or if you need to change a port or IP address.

Caution   Stopping a chat community abruptly disconnects the chat clients that are connected to the community.

Tip   To leave a chat community online but prevent new client connections, on the community's General tab, clear the Accept new connections check box. This action will disconnect the chat community on all servers.

To take a Chat community offline:

1. Start System Manager
   On the Start menu, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click System Manager.
2. Navigate to the IRCX folder for the server hosting the chat community you want to take offline.

   Servers

   1. Server_name
   2. Protocols
   3. IRCX
3. Right-click IRCX, and then click Properties.
4. On the IRCX Properties General tab, in the Chat communities list, click the chat community you want to take offline.
5. Click Properties.
6. On the Chat community tab, clear the Enable server to host this chat community check box.

7. On the IRCX Properties General tab, in the Chat communities list, the entry in the Enabled column for this chat community is now No.

Note   A disabled community is not restarted when the service is restarted. Disabling the community does not remove its configuration from the directory, however, so you can re-enable the community at another time.