Mornin', So my company is running an Exchange 2010 server on the domain controller, ill-advised I know, and now it's time to move it off into a virtual machine still running on the domain controller. So far it seems like the biggest quesiton is, is this mission critical? Yes. We're losing emails and clients are getting delayed/failed notifications when emailing our employees. So far I've got the virtual machine joined to the domain just fine, I'm logging in on an admin account just to be sure there's no issues there and still the setup crashes/locks up at the "Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 setup initializing..." portion eventually requiring me to end the process. The log file has been of little help stopping every time at: "Setup is choosing the domain controller to use Setup is choosing a local domain controller..." I'm stumped and management is having a cow. Any advise? Oh as an aside. I'd like to consider myself fairly tech savvy but a lot of server internals are at or above my pay level so if you could edge on the side of being verbose that'd be great. Cheers, Denny

When you have Exchange installed on a domain controller, Exchange will ONLY use that domain controller. Therefore ensure that the DC with Exchange installed on it is a global catalog. Then look at the network configuration of the new server and ensure the only DNS server it is using is the existing DC/Exchange server. Simon. Simon Butler, Exchange MVP Blog | Exchange Resources | In the UK? Hire Me.

I just got into the office and I'm starting with a fresh virtual machine and Exchange attempt right now. We only have one domain controller so I am a bit at a loss as to how it can be confused as to which one to use for I'll double check DNS settings when I get it up and post back if my problem is resolved. Thanks Sembee.

I just got into the office and I'm starting with a fresh virtual machine and Exchange attempt right now. We only have one domain controller so I am a bit at a loss as to how it can be confused as to which one to use for I'll double check DNS settings when I get it up and post back if my problem is resolved. Thanks Sembee.

hi, Any update? Have you fixed your issue? thanks,CastinLu TechNet Community Support