Glossary
Dirty shutdown (ESE)
State of an ESE database whose header says it was not closed cleanly: committed changes may exist only in its transaction logs until they are replayed.
An ESE database in dirty shutdown state was not detached cleanly: it was copied while in use, or the engine stopped abruptly. Changes already committed to the transaction logs (MSS*.log for Windows Search) may not be in the database file yet.
esentutl /mh Windows.edb shows the state. Soft recovery with esentutl /r MSS /d, run on a copy of the whole folder, replays the logs and marks the database clean. A dirty database is still readable; it just shows an older state and may still contain records the logged transactions later delete. Procedure: fixing a dirty Windows.edb with esentutl.