We've done a number of successful installs in test but when we try and install into our production Windows 2003 domain the install fails. The error that we get at the command line is: Configuring Microsoft Exchange Server Organization Preparation ......................... FAILEDAn unexpected error has occurred and a Watson dump is being generated: The process cannot access the file 'C:\ExchangeSetupLogs\ExchangeSetup.log' because it is being used by another process. The process cannot access the file 'C:\ExchangeSetupLogs\ExchangeSetup.log'because it is being used by another process. Exchange Server setup encountered an error. The Setup log ends as follows: Exchange Server setup encountered an error. [26/10/2006 20:42:46] [1] Executing 'initialize-ExchangeUniversalGroups -DomainController $RoleDomainController -ForeignForestFQDN $RoleForeignForestFQDN', handleError = False[26/10/2006 20:42:46] [2] Launching sub-task '$error.Clear(); initialize-ExchangeUniversalGroups -DomainController $RoleDomainController -ForeignForestFQDN $RoleForeignForestFQDN'.[26/10/2006 20:42:46] [2] Beginning the task's processing.[26/10/2006 20:42:46] [2] Used DC picard.qnrl.com to read object DC=qnrl,DC=com[26/10/2006 20:42:46] [2] Used DC picard.qnrl.com to read object CN=Configuration,DC=qnrl,DC=com[26/10/2006 20:42:46] [2] Executing command '$error.Clear(); initialize-ExchangeUniversalGroups -DomainController $RoleDomainController -ForeignForestFQDN $RoleForeignForestFQDN'.[26/10/2006 20:42:46] [2] Processing one object in the task.[26/10/2006 20:42:46] [2] Used DC picard.qnrl.com to read object OU=Microsoft Exchange Security Groups,DC=qnrl,DC=com[26/10/2006 20:42:47] [2] Used DC picard.qnrl.com to read object CN=Exchange Servers,OU=Microsoft Exchange Security Groups,DC=qnrl,DC=com[26/10/2006 20:42:47] [2] [WARNING] An unexpected error has occurred and a Watson dump is being generated: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.[26/10/2006 20:42:47] [2] [ERROR] Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Anyone managed to resolve this before?

Hi Charles, Unless you are part of one of our authorized programs (Technology Adoption Program or Rapid Deployment Program), you should not install Exchange 2007 into your production environment, as Exchange 2007 is not supported in production outside of one of these programs. Is this the first Exchange 2007 server you've tried to install into your production environment?

Thanks Scott. This is the first attempt at installing Exchange 2007 in our production environment. We had tried to install the product on a new server, but initially the install failed due to the Local Service account not having the "Impersonate a client after authentication " user right and installation failed at the /PrepareSchema stage. Once this was resolved we started getting the error above. I have some reason to believe that this is due to previous security hardening of our AD, but we are not seeing any failure events in the security logs, despite having enabled "Everyone - Fail" on the registry and on most of the objects in the domain. We are deploying this in production as part of the Microsoft Scotland EVO initiative (Exchange 2007, Vista, Office 2007) and we have committed to run on Exchange 2007 ourselves and have one customer on Exchange 2007 by the end of November. I can supply the details of our MS contact on request. Thanks again- Charles

Did you ever end up fixing this error? It looks like they still haven't fixed it and no one I can find has a solution for it. I'm still looking for an answer myself. If anyone has new information for this please post in the following thread: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3553990&SiteID=17&mode=1 Thanks.

I had this problem with EX2007 SP1 and resolved it by right-clicking setup.exe and choosing "run as administrator"-blm