Home / server / Questions / 128561
Accepted
Campo
Asked: 2010-04-02 11:00:26 +0800 CST

Remove Downed Exchange Server from First Administrative Group

  • 772

I had a server die. It is gone forever.

It is still listed in the servers folder of the first administrative group in the Exchange System Manager.

When I click "all tasks > Remove Server" I get the following error:

The Server "SERVERNAME" cannot be removed because:
-One or more users currently use a mailbox on this server. 
These users must be moved to a mailbox store on a different server 
or be mail disabled before uninstalling this server.
Facility: Exchange System Manager
ID no: c103f492
Exchange System Manager

Any help would be MUCH appreciated.

I cannot access the mailbox stores anymore and I do not care about the lost mailboxes. We deleted the inactive and old users as well. So I am stumped on this one. I just need to remove the old machine.

THANKS!

windows-server-2003 exchange exchange-2003

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Open AD and do a search for all users who have Exchange Home Server attribute set to the dead Exchange Server. Remove Exchange mailbox association if you find any users using the old server.

    • 1

  2. Knowledge Base article 833396 explains how to manually remove Exchange 2003. Just keep in mind that you are obviously skipping the steps related to the server itself and just handling active directory.

    One thing this article does not touch on is updating your connectors which may have been homed on that server and changing your public folder replication.

    I would also follow the advice in this article to update public folders, connectors and other services and put them on your new Exchange server.

    • 0