Forrest Prep Now asks for Exchange Admin rights

[donnybosco]

I tested our Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003 in the lab and it worked fine. After all our precautions we moved it to our production 2003 AD Native mode domain.

The server installed fine, but after 5 days of MTA issues, that I just kept trying to work through, I had enough. Microsoft has this great answer... I moved all the mailboxes back to 5.5, I uninstalled the only exchange 2003 server in the whole enviornment, and then ran a "setup /removeorg". This is supposed to remove everything so that you can start clean.

After doing all that, I rebooted the exchange server, and all 4 domain controllers.

Now I am supposed to be able to run "setup /forestprep" again. When I try to run forestprep, it will not let me under any id, including the exchange service which has full rights to the 5.5 org. It gives a message saying ..." The component Microsoft Exchange Forest Preperation cannot be assigned the action forestprep because: To install the first exchange server in a domain, or to run setup in /forestprep mode, you must be an Exchange Full Administrator at the Organizational Level. You must use an account that has been granted full exchange admistrator rols on the exchange organization using the Exchange Administrative Delegation Wizard."

In order to run the Exchange Administrative Delegation Wizard, you need exchange system manager installed (correct???), which I cannot install without an exchange server installed. If I try to install an exchange server, it tells me forest prep has not been run.

What do I do now. I cannot find help on Microsofts web site.

Please help me fix my f up.

 

[markdmac]

Are all of your FSMO roles on the same server?

From the Schema master run the Exchange setup.exe /forestprep command while logged on as Administrator.

Next run setup.exe /domainprep

Now you should be able to install Exchange 2003 on the Exchange server.


I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

 

[donnybosco]

Mark,

All of the FSMO roles are on the same server, and that is the server I am trying this from.

Forestprep fails with 3 seperate id's, including the administrator id. All 3 id's are in the schema admin and enterprise admin groups.

Forestprep still tells me to use the delegation wizard to grant permissions.

 

[nickpark]

This isn't going to be much help, but I did exactly the same. Installed Exchange 2003 Trial on a test domain, uninstalled it, then tried to install Enterprise on it and had the forestprep problem.

I did solve it, but can't for the life of me remember how!
I remember going into ADSIEdit and deleting schemas, running the Exchange install exe with /disasterrecovery , etc, etc... I'm pretty sure it was a simple fix in the end.

 

[donnybosco]

Here is the kicker.

I was able to install exchange system admin by doing a disaster recovery install. At least I know have the admin tool installed.

When I delegate control, it already has the servcie id, my id, and the administrator id in there. So I deleted the other 2, and left mine. Exited, then re-added the exchange service id.

I still could not run forestprep with the exchange service account.

Under ADSIedit, I can see the exchange service schema. I am afraid to delete it, because I do not want to make things worse on my prod domain.

If anyone has any suggestions before my problem gets worse, I would love to hear them.

Thanks,

 

[markdmac]

Since you are dealing with a production domain I would at this point suggest that you do a backup and then call PSS for help.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

 

[nickpark]

This looks relevant:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;830186

 

[donnybosco]

That article did help, but I butchered it. I did not have the GUID container. I did have the full exchange org name there. Seeing that I could delete the GUID container without screwing up the schema, I shut down one DC, so that if I did really blow things up, I could use that DC to recover.

I then deletes my exchange org under Configuration \ Services\ Microsoft Excahnge.

Then it did allow me to run forrestpres and domainprep sucessfully.

Thanks for the help. I hope it helps anyone else who searches these articles.