Hi There I currently planning to deploy exchange 2007 - we have a root domain and two child domains. The two child domains have a external trust between them and one is a NT4 domain and the other has a domain fuctional level of windows 2003. I am planning to install exchange in the child domain with windows 2003. As far as I can tell the forest level is windows 2000. Question 1. How can I dentify if the forest is mixed or native - ( when i click upgrade it gives me lettle info other then the next upgrade is 2003 ) Question 2. What is the miminum requirement for installing exchange 2007 within the forst is it windows 2000 native? Question 3. If I upgrade tthe forest functional level to windows 2003 will this break the NT4 environment? Many Thanks

An NT4 domain can not be a child domain because it cannot belong to a Windows 200x forest. 1. What you have is not a forest. What you have is a forest plus a trusted domain, or maybe a forest with one domain plus two trusted domains. I can't tell for sure from your description. 2. http://www.microsoft.com/exchange has a very good description of the requirements for Exchange 2007. 3. No. It's an external trust. The NT4 domain is not in your forest. To support Exchange 2007 mailboxes you will need accounts for all of them in your "real" forest. You can grant rights to the NT4 users to the mailboxes you create in the forest, though. Seriously, you should be looking to clean up your domain and Active Directory before you go about installing Exchange 2007. I wouldn't want to support Exchange 2007 with your mess. -- Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." . "Tazler" wrote in message news:e7a1aff5-533e-42af-a4be-1fd08413a223... Hi There I currently planning to deploy exchange 2007 - we have a root domain and two child domains. The two child domains have a external trust between them and one is a NT4 domain and the other has a domain fuctional level of windows 2003. I am planning to install exchange in the child domain with windows 2003. As far as I can tell the forest level is windows 2000. Question 1. How can I dentify if the forest is mixed or native - ( when i click upgrade it gives me lettle info other then the next upgrade is 2003 ) Question 2. What is the miminum requirement for installing exchange 2007 within the forst is it windows 2000 native? Question 3. If I upgrade tthe forest functional level to windows 2003 will this break the NT4 environment? Many Thanks Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

Please refer the article below: Exchange 2007 System RequirementsJames Luo TechNet Subscriber Support (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/ms788697.aspx) If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com

Thanks ed - WHAT - What I can see is that for e.g we have the parent contoso.com and a child domain free.contoso.com - planning to install exchange in free.contoso.com which is windows 2003 domain functional level - forest functional level is windows 2000 - now for the NT4 domain this is unfortunately running business critical apps and needs some work to upgrade. From what I can see when I right click within ad trusts and services on the child domain free.contoso.com . I see an external 2 way non transitive trust to a NT4 domain. So are you saying this means that this is not in the forest ? luckily the user accounts for exchange will be in the child domain and not in the nt4 domain. will there be any impact seeing as this is an external trust if we raised the forest functional level. Many Thanks

The NT4 domain is not part of your forest. It can't be. It is an external trusted domain. The two Exchange 2003 domains could be a forest, and it's likely that they are because of the contiguous namespace, but you have the tools to determine whether they are. -- Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." . "Tazler" wrote in message news:32cd1a3a-58db-4f2f-a333-3d0fa3331cc1... Thanks ed - WHAT - What I can see is that for e.g we have the parent contoso.com and a child domain free.contoso.com - planning to install exchange in free.contoso.com which is windows 2003 domain functional level - forest functional level is windows 2000 - now for the NT4 domain this is unfortunately running business critical apps and needs some work to upgrade. From what I can see when I right click within ad trusts and services on the child domain free.contoso.com . I see an external 2 way non transitive trust to a NT4 domain. So are you saying this means that this is not in the forest ? luckily the user accounts for exchange will be in the child domain and not in the nt4 domain. will there be any impact seeing as this is an external trust if we raised the forest functional level. Many Thanks Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

do you need to do a schema/ad upgrade in a trusted domain?

No. (This parenthetical addendum serves the purpose of lengthening the response to four or more characters, the minimum accepted by this forum.)Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."