Hey everyone, I migrated everything in our Exchange organization to 2010, and then it became time to remove 2007 from the organization. We have only 2 servers...2010, and 2007...and each of those ran CAS, HT, and Mailbox (it was like that when I showed up here). So I go to uninstall the 2007 roles and the mailbox role gives me errors when it tries to uninstall...fails to continue to uninstall CAS and HT. Something about replica public folders even though I moved it all...so I figure I'd continue by uninstalling HT and CAS, leaving MAILBOX role to do afterwards. So CAS and HT are gone...no errors...good. But Mailbox remains. So lets get rid of it as there are no mailboxes left on this node and I'd like a clean uninstall via the wizard. So I start appwiz.cpl and select Exchange, Uninstall, and uncheck the Mailbox role in the list. About 17 seconds in it fails...states: Error: Exchange server "exchangeserver.mydomain.com" was not found. Please make sure you have typed it correctly. So to Google/Bing I go. Folks say to try this: "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." BUT that errors with a popup windows with an exclamation point in it...but no text. So back to MS who states: "This problem occurs because the server object is directed to an object that was deleted from the Active Directory directory service." To resolve this problem, remove the invalid offline address book object. To do this, follow these steps: Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and then click Exchange Management Shell. Type the following command, and then press ENTER: get-OfflineAddressBook | where { $_.IsDefault } | remove-OfflineAddressBook When you are prompted to confirm, press Y, and then press ENTER. Close the Exchange Management Shell. But that states that the Address book was created in a newer console then the one that I'm trying to use...like 2010 versus 2007: Remove-OfflineAddressBook : \Offline Address book was created by a newer console version. Console version 14.0.100.0 or later is necessary to manage this object. At line:1 char:76 + get-OfflineAddressBook | where { $_.IsDefault } | remove-OfflineAddressBook < ...and I don't want to delete that anyway...do I? I just want to use the wizard to remove the mailbox role and I can't seem to get it to work. Please let me know your thoughts on how to proceed and I appreciate link posts, but I've already searched for a few hours on this and have nothing. I'm looking for the best direction to go in now. Thanks

If you launch adsiedit.msc (run box) and navigate to below can you see exchangeserver.mydomain.com? 1. start run, type adsiedit.msc 2. expand configuration, cn=services, cn=microsoft exchange, cn=org name, cn=admin groups, cn=Exchange admin group,cn=servers Does exchangeserver.mydomain.com exist still exist? If not it got orphaned. James Chong MCITP | EA | EMA; MCSE | M+, S+ Security+, Project+, ITIL msexchangetips.blogspot.com

Hey hey, It's not in there. Only the new 2010 node. Can I blow it away then? We're going to reformat and update for a DAG member anyway. I really really don't want to have any attributes floating around...and I don't care if the uninstall wasn't clean from the 2007 node, as log as the HT / CAS removal (which was clean) removed the 2007 node's attributes from the environment. Thanks a lot!

Yes that's your only option unless you want to go down the "supported" route of recovering the server using setup \recoverserver to bring it back in then do another proper uninstall. Most people just leave it as is at this point, you don't typically run into any issues with orphaned exchange servers and if you do you just clean it out or rehome anything you missed after so yes you can whack it.James Chong MCITP | EA | EMA; MCSE | M+, S+ Security+, Project+, ITIL msexchangetips.blogspot.com

Cool...thanks for your help...I'm just going to junk it :)