Here's my situation. An Exchange 2010 installation was attempted on on a server in a Server 2000 functional forest. The installation failed at step 10 of 11 and then locked up. I was called in to look at the problem and the Exchange server was freezing. We wiped out the server, reinstalled the operating system. Then we cleaned up as much as we could see in AD, elevated the forest to Server 2003, fully patched the server and added all the roles it would need to run Exchange The Exchange server preparation completes all its preinstallation checks and then fails about a minute after is starts to attempt installation. The installation summary text is listed at the bottom of this post. I've spent a couple of hours looking at posts on Technet and tried using both adsiedit and ldp to locate the issue without any success. Any and all suggestions welcome Summary: 12 item(s). 0 succeeded, 1 failed. Elapsed time: 00:00:29 Organization Preparation Failed Error: The following error was generated when "$error.Clear(); initialize-ExchangeUniversalGroups -DomainController $RoleDomainController -ActiveDirectorySplitPermissions $RoleActiveDirectorySplitPermissions " was run: "The well-known object entry B:32:C262A929D691B74A9E068728F8F842EA:CN=Organization Management\0ADEL:b0aa5c64-a925-46b6-a297-3e01f90a631e,CN=Deleted Objects,DC=CITY,DC=IQALUIT on the otherWellKnownObjects attribute in the container object CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=CITY,DC=IQALUIT points to an invalid DN or a deleted object. Remove the entry, and then rerun the task.". The well-known object entry B:32:C262A929D691B74A9E068728F8F842EA:CN=Organization Management\0ADEL:b0aa5c64-a925-46b6-a297-3e01f90a631e,CN=Deleted Objects,DC=CITY,DC=IQALUIT on the otherWellKnownObjects attribute in the container object CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=CITY,DC=IQALUIT points to an invalid DN or a deleted object. Remove the entry, and then rerun the task. Click here for help... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms.exch.err.default(EXCHG.141).aspx?v=14.1.218.11&e=ms.exch.err.Ex88D115&l=0&cl=cp Elapsed Time: 00:00:30 Preparing Setup Cancelled Stopping Services Cancelled Copy Exchange Files Cancelled

Hello Try this solution http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exchangesvrdeploy/thread/2fd295db-f84e-4c7b-a1cb-03fa0433d95f Thanks Mhussain

Hi Nunageek, You are in a unsupport scenario: manually remove Exchange 2010 is unsupported. If there are no legacy Exchange servers in your organization, maybe you can try this one: Manually Uninstall Last Exchange 2010 Server from Organization http://msgsense.com/2011/01/18/manually-uninstall-last-exchange-2010-server-from-organization/ Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.