Errors during Readiness Checks in Exchage Server 2007 setup
I've set up a new Windows server 2003 Standard x64 edition server, and am tying to get Exchange running on it. The server is a member of the only local domain. The AD domain controller is a windows 2003 server, sp2. This is the only domain controller on the network. On the domain controller, the mail server shows up in the computers list. On the mail server, I can browse on the network and find the domain controller. I am logged into both servers as "Administrator". When I ran the exchange server setup on the mail server, It all worked well until I hit the readiness checks. At this point it gives me several errors: Error: Active Directory does not Exist or cannot be contacted. Error: You must be a member of the 'Exchange Organization Administrators' or 'Enterprise Administrators' group to continue Error: Setup encountered a problem while validating the state of Active Directory: Active Directory server <servername removed> is not available. Error message: The supplied credential is invalid. Error: The user is not logged on to a Windows Domain Warning: The installation of Microsoft Information Services Common Files is recommended as it allwos for the administration of all server roles. Install the component via Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs If anyone out there has encountered a situation like this and wouldn't mind giving me some pointers, I'm all ears!
May 19th, 2007 12:24am

It is my guess that your exchange server TCP/IP DNS settings are not pointing at your internal DNS / DC server. You can try telnet the Domain Controller servername on pert 389 from the new exchange server & see if it connects to see if AD is easily accessible using the DCname from exchange server. also you could add /dc:dcname to the end of your command to force it to look at a particular domain controller.
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May 21st, 2007 2:35pm

Hi John, The DNS settings for the new exchange server point only to the DNS / DC server. I tried using telnet to connect to the Domain Controller and it didn't give an error. It just cleared the screen. If I hit a button at that point it drops me to a DOS prompt. I'm assuming that this means that I've connected and it's waiting on an initial command to do something in telnet. In any case, no errors when I do that. I can also ping <servername> and it finds the correct IP address of the domain controller. At this point, it looks like the exchange server can find the domain controller with no problems, is using the domain controller as it's DNS server and I can even browse across the "My network places" link to find it, but still gives me the errors on exchange setup that the active directory does not exist or cannot be contacted (among the other listed errors above). -Mark
May 22nd, 2007 7:23pm

I'm having the excat same problem. I even tried to create an SRV record to point to my DC. Nothing helped.
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May 24th, 2007 11:51pm

Hi, Just checking the obvious, have you run DCdiag and NetDiag on your Exchange Server? It may give some clues. Also, how many DCs do you have? Is the local/closest Global Catalog at Windows 2003 SP1? Dave
May 25th, 2007 3:33am

Hi Dave, thanks for posting. Not sure what DCdiag or NetDiag are, so... I did go to a dos prompt and type those commands in. It responded by telling me that they were not recognized as internal or external commands, operable programs or batch files. As stated above, the only domain controller on the network is on a second server. It is not the exchange server I am trying to set up. Forgot to post this before, yes, domain controller is Windows 2003 Standard Edition Service Pack 2 Mail server is Windows server 2003 Standard x64 edition service pack 2. Thanks, and if you have any other ideas, please keep them coming! -Mark
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May 25th, 2007 3:45am

Hi DCdiag and Netdiag are in the Windows Support Tools kit. Downloadable from MS at the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=96A35011-FD83-419D-939B-9A772EA2DF90&displaylang=en#filelist Although it's 32-bit, it will run OK on your 64-bit Exchange Server. Once installed, open the Support Tools Cmd prompt and type dcdiag /s:yourdcname Hopefully everything will pass OK. Also run netdiag from there and make sure things look good. Let me know how you get on. Dave
May 25th, 2007 4:05am

Ok! Finally gota chance to try these two tools you mentioned. netdiag reported so much stuff. Most of it passed, but a few things did not. I'll put the ones that look relevant here: Domain membership test ... Passed. WINS service test ... skipped. There are no WINS servers configured for this interface NetBT name test ... Passed. [WARNING] You don't have a single interface with the <00> 'WorkStation Service', <03> 'Messenger Service', <20> 'WINS' names defined DNS test ... passed Redir and Browser test ... Failed. (lots of stuff here, I'll repost exactly if you like, but ends with [FATAL] Cannot send mailslot message to '<domainname>' via browser. [ERROR_INVALID_FUNCTION] DC discover test ... passed DC list test ... passed Trust relationship test ... passed LDAP test ... passed. [WARNING] You are logged on as a local user. (MAIL.Administrator) Cannot test NTLM Authentication to 'backupserver.<domainname>'. Hope that will make sense to some of you. The dcdiag /s:backupserver (<--my domain controller) command says that I passed every test. Too many to type them all out here. No failures, no skips. Does it make sense that any of these results would keep me from installing Exchange?
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June 4th, 2007 11:37pm

Ok, I got it to work. Here is what I found: From Dave's note, and from then running netdiag, I saw that I was logged on the computer as a local user. I didn't realize this at the time, but unless you log into the domain, the exchange setup will not be able to see or contact the Active Directory. Logged into the domain at startup and that problem went away. At that point, it told me that I had to raise my domain functional level to a minimum of Windows 2000 native. Since I want my Windows 2000 boxes to be able to be on the network in the future, I chose to raise the domain functional level on the domain controller to Windows 2000 native instead of Windows 2003 native. This problem then went away. Finally, the installation check routine asked me to install Internet Information Services for various reasons. I did this, and now the installation appears to be progressing fine. Without the suggestion of using netdiag, I wouldn't have even considered that logging into the computer that was part of a domain would be any different than logging into the domain itself. Therefore, thanks to all, but I'll give Dave the credit for this solution.
June 5th, 2007 4:21am

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