Uninstall exchange 5.5 on an old Server Compaq Proliant

[Goldentongue]

Could some please give me a quick tutorial, or point me in the right direction.

I want to use the old company sever as a stand alone PC for our warehouse. It will only be used to print labels on a dedicated printer, and nothing more.

I want to uninstall everything that I do not need, and everything that produces an error message, ie. service was not started please see event viewer.

The server will not be part of my network.

Regards

GT

 

[beckas]

I've had success with uninstalling Exchange 5.5 using the following article: XADM: How to Manually Remove Exchange Server 5.5 Completely

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;259158

If you have an Exchange virus scan installed on the server, make sure that you uninstall that first before you uninstall Exchange. In my experience, uninstalling the Exchange virus scan after uninstalling Exchange can be a rather difficult task.

 

[jonarden]

Goldentongue, you may have considered this already, but if you have been getting error messages (you didn't say if they were from a specific application or from the operating system) you may wish to start completely fresh with a clean install of the operating system to help ensure that the error problem won't continue. (Unless, of course the errors are due to a hardware problem on the machine. You may want to confirm this is not the case before you proceed).

Make sure in advance that you have operating system media and a valid license key. During the new operating system install select the option to delete all pre-existing partitions and data from the hard drive(s). After the base install, be sure to also install all required operating system service packs and hotfixes. Also, install anti-virus software if any removable media will be inserted into the machine, or if it will be on a network.

Whenever you are going to network a "re-purposed machine" (but you said you were not in this case) make sure you identify in advance the make and model of NIC card(s) in that machine and download to a diskette copies of the correct NIC card drivers. Then you can reinstall the drivers just in case those specific drivers are not supplied with the operating system installation media. You might want to do this anyway so you have capability to download future hotfixes and service packs.

This method may take a bit longer than uninstalling specific pograms, but it should greatly reduce the liklihood of "erroring" and other possible problems by eliminating the remnants of ALL old, unneeded programs.