I made the mistake yesterday (in hindsite) of demoting an exchange 2003 enterprise server that was also a DC. I had set up a new exchange server and moved all the mailboxes and life was great. I wanted to use my old server as a front end server, but did not want it to be a DC as it would be in the dmz and exposed to the outside world. After running dcpromo, my new master exchange server seemed kinda shakey. It took several reboots to get all the exchange services to start, but we did have a functional email system when I left work yesterday. I have a few main questions: Can I now trust my exchange system to be a stable platform? On theoriginal Exchange server that I demoted, the Active Directory snap-in still appears to display AD just as is used to. Did the dcpromo not fully work? If I need to reboot the servers, will I always have touble restarting services? In exhange manager this morning, all servers were showing active with all services running. Thanks!

Did you uninstall Exchange off of the DC before demoting? If not, you can see problems on that Exchange server. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822179/en-us "You can run Exchange Server 2003 on either a member server or on a domain controller. After you install Exchange Server 2003 on a server, do not change the role of the server. For example, if you install Exchange Server 2003 on a member server, do not use the Dcpromo tool to promote the server to a domain controller. Or, if you install Exchange Server 2003 on a domain controller, do not use the Dcpromo tool to demote the server to a member server. Changing the role of a server after you install Exchange Server 2003 may result in loss of some Exchange functionality and is not supported." As far as the other "New" Exchange server, it was most likely using the DC/Exchange server for directory access when you ran the demotion. As long as you have valid DC/GCs listed under directory access which is in the ESM server properties, the New server will most likely be okay. The best way to comfort yourself there is to do a weekend/midnight restart. Everyone in the world can tell you it will be fine, but I would still like to reboot and see for myself if I was you. Also, in ADUC, if the DC/Exchange server is no longer listed as a DC, the demotion probably worked.