I'm tying to do some cleanup work at a company that I am taking over the internal IT tasks from a person that wasn't really qualified for the task previously. He did a migration to Exchange 2010 from Exchange 2007 which was upgraded from Exchange 2003. Long story short, the company is using the new Exchange 2010 server and most things work fine but we keep getting errors about non-existent public folders, backups are failing (backupexec), and occassionally meeting requests just disappear. I need to figure out how much of the old Exchange 2003/2007 mess is left around in Active Directory and get it removed. I already tried to do an uninstall of Exchange on the 2007 host but it fails with errors about missing components, and it looks like the previous admin manually went through the registry and file system deleting anything with the work Exchange in a poor attempt to uninstall the product. Thanks in advance. Sova Here are a sample of the error messages: Log Name: Application Source: MSExchange ADAccess Date: 4/3/2012 10:55:38 AM Event ID: 2159 Task Category: Validation Level: Warning Keywords: Classic User: N/A Computer: S-Natalie-11 Description: Process w3wp.exe () (PID=7116). Configuration object CN=Public Folder Database,CN=Public Storage Group,CN=InformationStore,CN=S-NATALIE-09,CN=Servers,CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT),CN=Administrative Groups,CN=Anitian Corporation,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=,DC=com read from S-Sabrina-09 failed validation and will be excluded from the result set. Set event logging level for Validation category to Expert to get additional events about each failure. Event Xml: <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> <System> <Provider Name="MSExchange ADAccess" /> <EventID Qualifiers="32772">2159</EventID> <Level>3</Level> <Task>6</Task> <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2012-04-03T17:55:38.000Z" /> <EventRecordID>153604</EventRecordID> <Channel>Application</Channel> <Computer>S-Natalie-11</Computer> <Security /> </System> <EventData> <Data>w3wp.exe ()</Data> <Data>7116</Data> <Data>CN=Public Folder Database,CN=Public Storage Group,CN=InformationStore,CN=S-NATALIE-09,CN=Servers,CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT),CN=Administrative Groups,CN=Anitian Corporation,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=anitian,DC=com</Data> <Data>S-Sabrina-09</Data> </EventData> </Event> Log Name: Application Source: MSExchange Search Indexer Date: 4/3/2012 10:51:04 AM Event ID: 104 Task Category: General Level: Error Keywords: Classic User: N/A Computer: S-Natalie-11 Description: Exchange Search Indexer failed to enable the Mailbox Database Operations (GUID = 410b959f-48e0-4b1d-847c-afd633516671) after 1 tries. The last failure was: MapiExceptionMdbOffline: Unable to Get Catalog State (hr=0x80004005, ec=1142) Diagnostic context: Lid: 1494 ---- Remote Context Beg ---- Lid: 44215 Lid: 60049 StoreEc: 0x8004010F Lid: 49469 Lid: 65341 StoreEc: 0x8004010F Lid: 56125 Lid: 47933 StoreEc: 0x8004010F Lid: 32829 Lid: 49213 StoreEc: 0x8004010F Lid: 48573 Lid: 64957 StoreEc: 0x8004010F Lid: 31321 StoreEc: 0x476 Lid: 1750 ---- Remote Context End ---- Lid: 19154 StoreEc: 0x476 Lid: 22081 StoreEc: 0x476 . It will retry after 10 minutes. Event Xml: <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> <System> <Provider Name="MSExchange Search Indexer" /> <EventID Qualifiers="49156">104</EventID> <Level>2</Level> <Task>1</Task> <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2012-04-03T17:51:04.000Z" /> <EventRecordID>153603</EventRecordID> <Channel>Application</Channel> <Computer>S-Natalie-11</Computer> <Security /> </System> <EventData> <Data>Operations</Data> <Data>410b959f-48e0-4b1d-847c-afd633516671</Data> <Data>1</Data> <Data>MapiExceptionMdbOffline: Unable to Get Catalog State (hr=0x80004005, ec=1142) Diagnostic context: Lid: 1494 ---- Remote Context Beg ---- Lid: 44215 Lid: 60049 StoreEc: 0x8004010F Lid: 49469 Lid: 65341 StoreEc: 0x8004010F Lid: 56125 Lid: 47933 StoreEc: 0x8004010F Lid: 32829 Lid: 49213 StoreEc: 0x8004010F Lid: 48573 Lid: 64957 StoreEc: 0x8004010F Lid: 31321 StoreEc: 0x476 Lid: 1750 ---- Remote Context End ---- Lid: 19154 StoreEc: 0x476 Lid: 22081 StoreEc: 0x476 </Data> <Data>10</Data> </EventData> </Event>

If the attempt was made on the server itself, but you see everything in the domain, then one option would be to DR the Exchange 2007 server. That would mean building a new server that has the same name as the one you cannot remove, resetting the AD account, adding it to the domain and then installing Exchange from the command line with the recoverserver switch. The replacement server needs to be identical - so same Windows version, service pack etc and you may find you have to use something other than Exchange 2007 SP3 to do the install (Depending on the version). Once you have the Exchange 2007 server up, then you can clean things up by correcting public folder replication etc. The error code 0x8004010F means cannot find, and usually means the public folder isn't replicated to the server. Check the replication settings that the Exchange 2010 server is listed as a replica. Manual removal of Exchange 2007 is not supported - the only method is the one I have outlined. Simon. Simon Butler, Exchange MVP Blog | Exchange Resources | In the UK? Hire Me.

So I went ahead and tried to recover the 2008 server but the install fails and says that it cannot install. Originally the 2007 box was an Exchange 2003 server and I'm not sure that upgrade was done very cleanly either. Since we don't see any of the Exchange 2003 objects or public folders around in AD, we are pretty sure that the previous guy tried to manually remove Exchange by using ADSIedit and deleting things (doh!). Right now we are reinstalling a Windows 2003 SP2 box with Exchange 2003 on it. I am hoping that running the domain prep and forest prep can recreate the missing AD schema elements and then we can do a migration of the (empty) public folders and other objects to the new Exchange 2010 box and then cleanly uninstall the Exchange 2003 server. Is there any tools that we can run to get a list of problems that need to be corrected in Active Directory and the Exchange 2010 environment? That way we can clean everything up one problem at a time and then do the uninstall.

Hello, You can use the EXBPA tool to check the healthy. Thanks, Simon

So I went ahead and tried to recover the 2008 server but the install fails and says that it cannot install. Originally the 2007 box was an Exchange 2003 server and I'm not sure that upgrade was done very cleanly either. Since we don't see any of the Exchange 2003 objects or public folders around in AD, we are pretty sure that the previous guy tried to manually remove Exchange by using ADSIedit and deleting things (doh!). Right now we are reinstalling a Windows 2003 SP2 box with Exchange 2003 on it. I am hoping that running the domain prep and forest prep can recreate the missing AD schema elements and then we can do a migration of the (empty) public folders and other objects to the new Exchange 2010 box and then cleanly uninstall the Exchange 2003 server. Is there any tools that we can run to get a list of problems that need to be corrected in Active Directory and the Exchange 2010 environment? That way we can clean everything up one problem at a time and then do the uninstall. There is no in place upgrade path between Exchange 2003 and 2007, as 2003 is 32 bit and 2007 is 64 bit, so either someone did something unsupported or you are mistaken that it was upgraded. If you can get Exchange 2003 management tools installed, that might allow you to do the work that is required without having to do a full server installation. As already pointed out, the EXBPA will give you an indication of the mess that has been made. For example, if you can get ESM loaded and it shows the Exchange 2003 server, then you can delete it from there. That will remove a lot of the junk. It will take a while for the delete command to come up. However only do that when you have removed/moved all public folder configuration etc. Simon.Simon Butler, Exchange MVP Blog | Exchange Resources | In the UK? Hire Me.