Messages stuck in Exchange 2010 queue (resolved)

Today a collegae of mine ran into a problem with Exchange 2010. Messages both internally/externally were not delivered. We noticed that the Exchange server was using 100% CPU resources.  After some investigation we noticed that the submission queue was building up.

We decided to suspend the queue, exporting the messages. Then deleting the queue and recreating it. Finally we imported the exported messages. We used the following steps :

First open the Exchange Management Shell

Show all Exchange queues

get-queue

Suspend all messages in this queue

get-queue exchangeserver#submission | get-message | suspend-message

Export all suspended messages

$array = @(Get-Message -Queue "ExchangeServer\submission" -ResultSize unlimited) 
$array | ForEach-Object {$i++;Export-Message $_.Identity | AssembleMessage -Path ("c:\Mailqueue\"+ $i +".eml")}

Stop the MsexchangeTransport service

Stop-Service MsExchangeTransport

Now rename the queue directory, the default directory is

Startthe MsexchangeTransport service

Start-Service MsExchangeTransport