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I'm in the process of trying to install Exchange 2010 Standard onto one of our servers, and I've hit a bit of a snag.

Two of the readiness checks fail, saying:

Coexistence between Exchange Server 2010 and Exchange Server versions older than Exchange Server 2007 SP2 in the same Active Directory Site is not supported.

The trouble is...we don't have Exchange 2007.

It does, however, seem that we had it at one time. The server didn't get used, and rather than uninstall Exchange, it appears that the server (a virtual machine at the time) was just done away with. Because of this, I can't go through the normal process of removing Exchange 2007 (or just upgrading it to SP2) to satisfy this condition.

I've followed directions that I found online to use ADSI Edit to remove all traces of Exchange-related objects from AD, but the readiness check is still failing. Is there something I'm missing? Something else that I need to do in order to remove Exchange objects from the schema so that I can install 2010?

Adam Robinson
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    What instructions did you follow to "remove all traces" of Exchange 2007? – Evan Anderson Aug 21 '10 at 01:25
  • @Evan: I don't have the link here at home (and I can't seem to find it again), but the short version was to open ADSI Edit and remove the two Exchange objects from the root of the domain. – Adam Robinson Aug 21 '10 at 01:36
  • Exchange objects are stored (mainly) in the Configuration directory partition, not in the domain one. BTW, nothing can be ever removed from the AD *schema* once it has been extended; only actual *objects* can be removed. – Massimo Aug 21 '10 at 02:56

2 Answers2

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If you really don't have any Exchange server in your domain, your best bet would be to fire up your trusty ADSIEdit and remove the Exchange Organization object. It should be in Configuration\Services\Microsoft Exchange\OrganizationName. If you remove "Microsoft Exchange" under "Services", all Exchange-related informations should go away.

You should also remove the computer object for the old Exchange 2007 server(s).

If even after this cleanup the installer keeps complaining, try manually running setup /PrepareSchema; this should take care of schema version mismatches, if there is any.

Oh, and it would also be useful to check if your domain controllers are properly replicating; maybe they aren't, and one or more of them still have Exchange-related objects lingering around even if you removed them.

Massimo
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    +1 - Yep. If the OP removed objects from the root of the domain then they didn't remove the Exchange Organization. – Evan Anderson Aug 21 '10 at 02:47
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    +1. Thanks, this worked like a charm! @Evan, you are correct; I removed the OU's from the domain, but failed to connect to the Configuration section. After removing this object, the installer no longer complains. – Adam Robinson Aug 21 '10 at 03:08
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In similar situations ive reinstalled the application and then uninstalled it. Unless something really heinous happened during the original setup, like someone manually editing install paths or something, the uninstaller should take care of everything thats already there on its own.

Devnull
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  • Thanks, I can give that a shot, though the original server is gone. Would this work if I just install Exchange 2007 on any server? – Adam Robinson Aug 21 '10 at 02:19