My predecessorran a migration from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003 using thenew hardware processwhichat acertain point failed and alsobroke the Exchange 2000 server which then had to bereinstalled and disaster recovered. During that process Exchange 2003ForestPrep and DomainPrep will havebeen run in the Domain that I've nowinherited. I plan todo an in-place upgradeto Exchange 2003 on that recovered Exchange 2000 server and need to know that I'm doing my job properly and following Microsoft's procedure right from the start andto the letter for this and have a few questions. Do ForestPrep and DomainPrep have to be run on a Schema Master or can they be run on any DC in the Domain? Can ForestPrep and DomainPrep be run during working hours? When I run Exchange 2003ForestPrep and DomainPrep for my upgrade, will theyfailwhen they find objects that already exist in Active Directory because they've been run before? Kind regards.

You just need to run ForestPrep in the domain where Schema Master stays Please see Running Exchange Server 2003 ForestPrep and Running Exchange Server 2003 DomainPrep in Installing New Exchange 2003 Servers You may run these utilities in the non-product hour to avoid undesirable issue If the utilities had been run successfully before, the installation will inform you of this before terminating the process when you try to run them again Resources: Forestprep and Domainprep Explained in Detail How to Verify That ForestPrep and DomainPrep Completed Successfully in Exchange 2000 Server or Exchange Server 2003