I am playing around with Exchange as far as adding new servers to an environment. I added a test server and installed Exchange and now it is part of my organization in the mailbox role. Well then someone else used the same server to test something else... without checking first... and flatened the machine So now when I try and reinstall, it says the Exchange Server is inconsistent and only disaster recovery mode is available. I went into ADSIEdit and see that the server is still located in CN=Configuration,DC=domain,DC=com CN=Services CN=Microsoft Exchange CN=Administrative Groups CN=Exchange Administrative Group CN=Servers I don't want to just delete the object without knowing what will happen. Is there another way to edit the servers within an Exchange organization when a server is no longer available? If I do delete it, do I have to restart the other servers, or do something like a gpupdate?

You did not mention if you were using E2K3 or E2K7. If you blow away a server that was running E2K7, you really should not go in to ADSIEDIT and clean it out that way. You should re-install Windows Server (if it is not already running) using the same machine name, and then run Exchange server setup again in disaster recovery mode. Once you get the server re-installed you can then uninstall it properly.

Sorry, Exchange 2007 Standard on Server 2003 Standard. How do I use 'disaster recovery mode'? Is this a tool or do I run setup with a switch from the command line?

Hi, Firstly, you are right that this issue was caused by objects left in Active Directory during the first installation. But as Jim said, there is no need to delete the server by using the ADSIEDIT. We can reinstall the test server by selecting either of the below methods: Method 1: 1) In Windows 2003 server, please navigate to the Exchange installation path, and ensure both setup.exe and setup.com exists in this folder. 2) In Windows 2003 server, click Start --> Run 3) In the Run dialog, enter command cmd, and then click OK to open a command windows. 4) In the command windows, navigate to the Exchange Installation path folder first. 5) In the command windows, enter the following commands: setup.com /mode:recoverserver Note: You could also type setup.com /? for more information about these command line parameters Method 2: If you need to deleted the server object from the location that you mentioned, then you should be able to install Exchange server as youve done in the first installation. The difference between these two installation approaches is that when we used "setup.com /mode:recoverserver to install Exchange server, it will maintain all previous configurations before the original server crashed. If we deleted the server object from the above location and install Exchange server as the first installation, then all previous configuration will be lost and Exchange started a entirely new installation on this server. Thanks Allen