A little complicated; please bear with me. I'm a tech consultant who comes in for some IT projects. Day to day operations and smaller projects are handled in-house. History: A year ago, tried to install SBS 2011 to replace a Windows 2003 Server on a single-server domain. Ran into issues migrating AD, teaming NIC's, etc. Eventually learned that SBS wouldn't be supported by the vendor of a critical application that would run on the server, so happily scrapped SBS and installed 2008 R2. (Which had been my initial recommendation, overruled due to SBS's low purchase price. Whatever.) Since then, the server closet has expanded to 4 servers. At least two of these are Domain Controllers. I haven't been involved in installing these additional servers, so I'm not fully up to speed on their roles. One is an ERP system based on MS SQL, one is a Terminal Server, one is a engineering CAD server, and one is the old 2003 server from which all data has not yet been migrated. Now, I've been brought in to install Exchange 2010 on the original Server 2008. It's been a rocky road, because components of Exchange are left over in the Registry from the SBS debacle. At every step in the installation program, I've had to edit AD to remove components that are perventing the installation from proceeding. At this point, the Mailbox Role installation failed for a complex series of reasons in AD. Rather than continuing to work through selective deletions from AD, to try to patch the deployment together, I'd like to make a clean start by completely removing Exchange from the server and from AD. I tried to uninstall Exchange, but the uninstall program failed. My question: How can I manually remove Exchange from the server and AD, so I can start with a clean install? Thanks for any help!

Correction - components of Exchange are left over in AD from the SBS debacle.

Go to Adsiedit.msc - Select the Configuration partion - expand the doman - go to services - go to exchange - you can see the server name which you have used for exchange - select and delte the same.Exchange Queries

Hi I have to say that it is not recommanded by MS. So I am not responsible for result. Stop and Disable All the Exchange Related Services below in the same method. Microsoft Exchange Address Book Microsoft Exchange Anti-spam Update Microsoft Exchange EdgeSync Microsoft Exchange File Distribution Microsoft Exchange Forms-Based Authentication Microsoft Exchange IMAP4 Microsoft Exchange Information Store Microsoft Exchange Mail Submission Service Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Assistants Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Replication Service Microsoft Exchange Monitoring Microsoft Exchange POP3 Microsoft Exchange Protected Service Host Microsoft Exchange Replication Service Microsoft Exchange RPC Client Access Microsoft Exchange Search Indexer Microsoft Exchange Server Extension for Windows Server Backup Microsoft Exchange Service Host Microsoft Exchange Speech Engine Microsoft Exchange System Attendant Microsoft Exchange Throttling Microsoft Exchange Transport Microsoft Exchange Transport Log Search regedit Navigate to the following registry entries and delete them. COMPUTER ->HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE ->SOFTWARE -> MICROSOFT -> EXCHANGE COMPUTER ->HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE ->SOFTWARE -> MICROSOFT -> EXCHANGESERVER COMPUTER ->HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE ->SYSTEM ->CURRENTCONTROLSET ->SERVICES ->MSEXCHANGE* (Everything Starts with MSExchange) COMPUTER -> HKEY_CURRRENT_USER -> SOFTWARE -> MICROSOFT -> EXCHANGESERVER ADsiedit Navigate to the following objects and Delete them. CN=Configuration,DC=Domain,DC=Com -> CN=Services -> CN=Microsoft Exchange CN=Configuration,DC=Domain,DC=Com -> CN=Services -> CN=Microsoft Exchange AutodiscoverTerence Yu TechNet Community Support

Thanks, we'll make sure we have a fallback (system state backup), then give it a try, and provide feedback later.