Exchange 2007 failed installation comment

Grr...

One of my Exchange 2007 HT boxes that failed ages ago keeps prompting me to do some work on my domain and finally get rid of it.

The OS is gone and therefore Exchange is gone. But to the rescue comes setup/removeprovisionedserver. Well actually, no...

The RemoveProvisionedServer parameter tells Setup to remove the placeholder Exchange Server object from Active Directory.

Use this parameter to remove unwanted provisioned servers from Active Directory.

Use Setup /RemoveProvisionedServer: to remotely remove the specified provisioned server. If no server name is passed, Setup attempts to remove a provisioned server with the same name as the local computer.

Not in the case of the server being unavailable it doesn't. And I can't install Exchange unless I install a server with the same name as the old one then use setup /recoverserver. This is where interoperability comes into play, albeit in a rather unfriendly kind of way. See later...

My next problem was that my hub transport server has a mind of its own and will send emails to my 2003 but will not accept them. There's a matched pair of routing group connectors and they've been checked several times. I know, let's rip out Exchange and put it back in - I need to practice.

If you try to uninstall Exchange 2007 for a hub transport server with a bridgehead routing group connector it won't uninstall. Zip. You have to remove the connectors by hand.

get-routinggroupconnector

Marvellous, there they are

remove-routinggroupconnector "Interop RGC"

Multiple entries found...cannot delete. Grr...

Later...

I got fed up with it and it isn't a nice thing to do to an Exchange implementation but both sides of the Interop routing group connector and the failed server were removed successfully.

Exchange System Manager on an Exchange 2003 box. Right click, delete. Job done.

But punters please note - setup /removeprovisionedserver on its own will remove Exchange from the local machine. Whose daft idea was that?