Hi, We had two Exchange servers in our environment. Both standalone, but only one was in use. I am trying to remove the used one but the uninstallation is failing on the messaging and collaboration services. It says something about unable to start a service. Is there an easy way round to get this Exchange off. The server is being rebuilt but I dont just want to format as it will still appear in Exchange Server manager. Any Ideas?

The best thing is if you can get the server working and then uninstall it since this will remove objects from Active Directory. What version of Exchange is the troublesome server? You could install Exchange with the recovery switch. this will only install binaries that you can later simply uninstall. switch is different depending of Exchange version. There is always a last option to delete it from Active Directory with ADSI or LDP.

The Exchange Server is 2003 Enterprise. So, I re-install the server and uninstall? I was having this idea but wasn't sure it would work. I really, really don't want to have to mess with ADSI so I will try the reinstall first.

Hi Lasse, I think the problem was it thought the SMTP service wasn't installed, but it was. I removed and reinstalled the service then tried the reinstalled and removal of exchange and it all worked fine. It is now off the server and out of AD. Thanks for the help