After transitioning to Exchange 2010, I am attempting to uninstall our old Exchange 2007 server. I'm getting "Exchange server (server name) was not found. Please make sure you have typed it correctly" when i attempt to uninstall the Mailbox role. Initially I was getting "Object is read only because it was created by a future version of Exchange: 0.10 (14.0.100.0). Current supported version is 0.1 (8.0.535.0).", but after removing the 2007 box from the OAB and "successfully" uninstalling the CAS and Hub Transport roles, now I get the 'server not found' message. I have looked under the CN=Servers container in ADSIEDIT and sure enough, the Exchange 2007 server is no longer listed there. I'm assuming at this point I'm going to need to manually uninstall everything, unless someone has any insight in how to get the uninstaller to run when it can't find the server container. What is the "cleanest" way to manually uninstall at this point?

Hi But you still have the MBX role installed on it? I'll paste a link for Exchange 2003, it's almost the same but it's not supported to manually uninstall Exchange 2007 and newer AFAIK http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Remove-Exchange-server-entire-Exchange-organization.html Maybe you can reinstall the server and run a recoverserver switch, after the installation you can try to uninstall it the correct way. That's the best and the way MS would give you. Jonas Andersson MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007/2010 | MCITP: EMA 2007/2010 | MCSE/MCSA Blog: http://www.testlabs.se/blog

Hi, To manually uninstall exchange server, please refer the following steps: Note: Before you remove exchange mailbox role, please make sure that all users mailboxes have been moved to exchange 2010. 1. Logon to the Exchange server, and then Stop and disable the Exchange 2007 services. 2. On the Exchange server, navigate to the Exchange 2007 installation CD. 3. In the root folder of the Exchange 2007 installation CD, we clicked on ExchangeServer.MSI and right click to choose Uninstall. After that, all Exchange installation files will be physically removed from this server. 4. Use Registry Editor to removed all Exchange related registry keys. The following are the detail steps for us to do that a. Click Start, click Run, type regedit , and then click OK. b. Locate and then click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange c. Right-click Exchange, and then click Delete. Click Yes in the Confirm Key Delete dialog box. d. Repeat steps b and c for each of the keys containing keyword Exchange or MSEXchange under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services 5. Remove the Internet Information Services (IIS) component.

Hi But you still have the MBX role installed on it? I'll paste a link for Exchange 2003, it's almost the same but it's not supported to manually uninstall Exchange 2007 and newer AFAIK http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Remove-Exchange-server-entire-Exchange-organization.html Maybe you can reinstall the server and run a recoverserver switch, after the installation you can try to uninstall it the correct way. That's the best and the way MS would give you. Jonas Andersson MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007/2010 | MCITP: EMA 2007/2010 | MCSE/MCSA Blog: http://www.testlabs.se/blog Thanks for the reply. When I attempt to run setup.com /M:RecoverServer it tells me: The following server roles will be recovered Management Tools Server is not found in Active Directory. Server must be present in Active Directory to recover. Exchange Server setup encountered an error. It is interesting that setup thinks it only needs to recover the Management Tools and not the Mailbox role, however, I think the fact that it still doesn't see the server in AD is going to cause issues. If I attempt to re-install the mailbox role it fails because it says it previously failed while performing the action "Uninstall".

Hi, To manually uninstall exchange server, please refer the following steps: Note: Before you remove exchange mailbox role, please make sure that all users mailboxes have been moved to exchange 2010. 1. Logon to the Exchange server, and then Stop and disable the Exchange 2007 services. 2. On the Exchange server, navigate to the Exchange 2007 installation CD. 3. In the root folder of the Exchange 2007 installation CD, we clicked on ExchangeServer.MSI and right click to choose Uninstall. After that, all Exchange installation files will be physically removed from this server. 4. Use Registry Editor to removed all Exchange related registry keys. The following are the detail steps for us to do that a. Click Start, click Run, type regedit , and then click OK. b. Locate and then click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange c. Right-click Exchange, and then click Delete. Click Yes in the Confirm Key Delete dialog box. d. Repeat steps b and c for each of the keys containing keyword Exchange or MSEXchange under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services 5. Remove the Internet Information Services (IIS) component. Are there any steps to remove the Exchange 2007 server from AD, Sites and Services, etc? I just don't want to have a seriously tattooed AD infrastructure after this is all said and done.

Alright, I ended up doing the manual uninstall, then reinstalling the mailbox role, and cleanly uninstalling it. All seems to be well again. Thanks for all the help.