Win2K3/Exchnage 2K3 Migration Question

[WB33]

My small organization currently consists of (3)servers.

1) WIN 2K PDC/Licensing server.
2) WIN 2003 BETA build 3718 Terminal server.
3) WIN 2K Mail server hosting Exchange 2000 that is also the GC for the domain.

Over the years our group policy and server registries have been influenced by various admins that have left the company making our servers a nightmare to administer.
I will need to upgrade my WIN2K PDC and Terminal servers to Windows 2003 standard, but I want to do so by loading from scratch so that I can rid myself of the any administrative changes made in the past. Once complete, I intend to recreate my users in AD, lay down a new group policy and migrate any important files my users need from tape.

However, one major obstacle that I cannot think through is my Exchange server. Since it is my acting global catalog everything that will be reloaded on my PDC will still be retained here. I am pretty sure that this is an issue. How do I get around this? I do not mind reloading my mail server from scratch, but I MUST be able keep any e-mail messages the users received over the past several years and allow them access once I have reconditioned the environment.

 

[gmcdonnell]

One approach would be to extract the messages to PST files using EXMERGE.EXE. This is a free utility that Microsoft provides. It's located on the Exchange 2000 installation disk (can't remember where, sorry).

You will have to grant the Administrator access rights to all of the mailboxes for this program to work. In addition, a PST file is limited to 2GB or smaller, so if you have any mailboxes that are larger than that you'll have to use some of the advanced settings of EXMERGE on these and create multiple PST files for those mailboxes.

Good luck!

/gary