Hi. Our attempted transition to 2007 has not gone well and I'm to the point where I want to remove 2007 from our organization. Here is what happens:1. Go to the 2008 version of Add/remove programs.2. Tell it to uninstall Exchange 2007.3. Pass readiness checks (finally!).4. Click on the Uninstall button.After that I get a critical error that says: "Cannont open log for source 'MSExchangeSetup.' You may not have write access."This is confusing since I am logged on as Administrator. Any suggestions are appreciated.

Check the setup log and application event log for more detail, you may get more clues References: Exchange 2007 setup logs and how to use them to troubleshoot setup

Thanks for the response. I've checked the setup and application logs, but there isn't anything in them that gives more clues.

Hi, First, please ensure that you have not delete any setup log in ExchangeSetuplog folder, it should locate at %SystemDrive%\ExchangeSetupLogs. Then please ensure that the account you used to uninstall Exchange 2007 is the same one which you used to install Exchange 2007. Meanwhile, Id like to know the below information. 1. what is your scenario now? 2. What the original Exchange Orgainzaiton you have? With Exchange 2003,2000? 3. What steps you have done to the Exchange Orgaization, moving all the Exchange data to Exchange 2007,or just installing Exchange 2007 into the existing Exchange Organization? Besides, please use MPSRPT_Exchange.exe to gather more information to troubleshoot this issue. How to install the Exchange edition of the Microsoft Product Support Reporting Tool http://support.microsoft.com/?id=870640 Then please send ExchangeSetup.log and ExchangeSetup.msilog with cab file generated from MPSRPT_Exchange.exe to Xiu Zhang Related information share with you: How to Completely Remove Exchange 2007 from a Server http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123893(EXCHG.80).aspx Thanks. Regards, -Xiu

Hi, Searching on exchangesetup.log, we found several errors. With logs from 8/14,when you use the right account, we picked up the below errors. 1. First please check whether the Microsoft Exchange Transport Service has been started. Related Error log: [8/14/2008 12:58:27 PM] [1] [ERROR] Microsoft Exchange can't connect to the Queue Viewer server on computer "localhost". Verify that the Microsoft Exchange Transport service is started. Note: Please run services.msc to open service manager. 2. Please check your Distribution Group. Below object has been corrupted. If possible, please correct the alias with Valid values. domain.com/Managed Objects/Distribution Groups/TMF EMAIL domain.com/Managed Objects/Distribution Groups/TMFAliases/tmfedu domain.com/Managed Objects/Distribution Groups/Everyone e-mail You can use adsiedit Related Error log: [1] [WARNING] Object domain.com/Managed Objects/Distribution Groups/Everyone e-mail has been corrupted and it is in an inconsistent state. The following validation errors have occurred: [1] [WARNING] "Everyone e-mail" is not valid for Alias. Valid values are: Strings formed with characters from a to z (uppercase or lowercase), digits from 0 to 9, !, #, $, %, &, ', *, +, -, /, =, ?, ^, _, `, {, |, } or ~. One or more periods may be embedded in an alias, but each one of them should be preceded and followed by at least one of the other characters. Unicode characters from U+00A1 to U+00FF are also valid in an alias, but they will be mapped to a best-fit US-ASCII string in the email address which is generated from such an alias. [1] [WARNING] Object domain.com/Managed Objects/Distribution Groups/TMFAliases/tmfedu has been corrupted and it is in an inconsistent state. The following validation errors have occurred: [WARNING] "Staff Development Calendar" is not valid for Alias. Valid values are: Strings formed with characters from a to z (uppercase or lowercase), digits from 0 to 9, !, #, $, %, &, ', *, +, -, /, =, ?, ^, _, `, {, |, } or ~. One or more periods may be embedded in an alias, but each one of them should be preceded and followed by at least one of the other characters. Unicode characters from U+00A1 to U+00FF are also valid in an alias, but they will be mapped to a best-fit US-ASCII string in the email address which is generated from such an alias. [1] [WARNING] Object domain.com/Managed Objects/Distribution Groups/TMF EMAIL has been corrupted and it is in an inconsistent state. The following validation errors have occurred: [1] [WARNING] "TMF EMAIL" is not valid for Alias. Valid values are: Strings formed with characters from a to z (uppercase or lowercase), digits from 0 to 9, !, #, $, %, &, ', *, +, -, /, =, ?, ^, _, `, {, |, } or ~. One or more periods may be embedded in an alias, but each one of them should be preceded and followed by at least one of the other characters. Unicode characters from U+00A1 to U+00FF are also valid in an alias, but they will be mapped to a best-fit US-ASCII string in the email address which is generated from such an alias. Besides, evt files in mps_report has been corrupted. If the above steps do not help you to uninstall Exchange 2007,then please find error event in event viewer and post here(including the detail error information) Hope it helps. Xiu

Xiu,Thank you very much for taking the time to look into my problem. Those aliases are distribution groups and some users had a middle initial followed by a "." I got fixed those and I'm sure that will help the next time we try to move to 2007.I finally was able to uninstall Exchange 2007. The problem turned out to be with the Symantec Endpoint client on that server. For some crazy reason it blocks Exchange from accessing the event logs. Even if you uninstall the Endpoint client that block doesn't go away. You have to go into the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Eventlog\ then delete the CustomSD values for each of the logs (application, system, etc).

Cool. It would be great helpful to others who may encounter the same problem in the futher. Thanks for your feedback. Regards, -Xiu