I am evaluating Exchange 2007. Installed it on a test machine in a test environment. No problems whatsoever, everything works fine. Ran a Health check in the Best Practices Analyser and this is what it says: The 'Services' string type value located in 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Setup\Services' registry key is missing or inaccessible. The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service will not start. As a result, all services that depend on this service will not be able to start. Please visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/285116 for more information. I checked out kb285116 but everything checks out. The information store service has started and all services dependent on it. Is there an error inthe health check or is something more sinister afoot?

I ran the check after removing the exchange 2003 server (I am testing/rehearsingin a test environment what I have to do laterin the production environment). After the removal The First Administrative Group is still there. Unchecking this group in the health check solves the problem.The analyser cannotanalyse it because itdoesn't exist anymore.Using ADSI to remove the first administrative group is not a good idea see: http://mostlyexchange.blogspot.com/2007/02/cleaning-up-exchange-20002003.html What do I have to doabout this orphaned 'first administrative group'? I doesn't seem to be doing any harm, butI find it a bit messy.Peculiar that I can find little or nothing writtenabout this problem (it is after all the first thingone runs into after a standardout-of-the-box operation).

The problem with the health check was caused by lack of health. First time around I omitted to remove the public folder store before deinstalling the exchange 2003 server. The second time I did remove the public folder store first, resulting in perfect health forboth administrative groups. Removing the public folder store on the legacy server effects moving the remaining public folders to the ex2007 server. The first administrative groupstays behind though,itis neededforlegacy (i.e. Pre-Outlook 2007) clients, free/busy wouldn't work forthose clients otherwise. Rehearsing this operation in a test environment is highly recommended.A test rig is not difficult to set up. All you need is an old Athlon 64 computer for w2003(x64)/ex2007 and a virtual machine for a domain/ex2003 setup. Usesnapshots(seehttp://www.drivesnapshot.com- a very good and cheap utility) to revert toaprevious situationquickly.You need a technet or msdn subscription of course for thew2003 licenses.