Manually Remove Exchange 2007
Last couple of days I was trying to jumpstart an Exchange 2007 install that got hosed.
At a certain moment I couldn’t install because of an incomplete uninstall. Uninstalling exchange was also unsuccessful because some objects were missing from Active Directory. When I finally got out of that loop, I started getting complaints about MSI’s that could not be found/unpacked. I wanted to avoid reinstalling the OS so I tried removing exchange manually.
- Run setup /m:uninstall
- Stop and disable all the Exchange 2007 services
- Use Registry Editor (Start->Run->Regedit) to remove these Exchange related registry keys:
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange
- HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchange* (all the keys starting with “MSExchange”)
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Microsoft Exchange
- Remove the entire Web Server role (don’t forget to reinstall afterwards as it’s a prerequisite for E2K7!)
- Remove the Exchange 2007 server from Active Directory. I ended up deleting the entire “Microsoft Exchange” branch from ADSIEdit (Configuration Container > Services > Microsoft Exchange) as my Org only counts one server.
- Use Windows Explorer to delete:
- C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server
- C:\ExchangeSetupLogs
- Use Windows Installer CleanUp Utility to remove all the exchange related info from the installer database.
- Remove the security groups created by Exchange setup from AD
Note: Manually removing Exchange 2007 is not supported by Microsoft! Official guidance for removing Exchange 2007 can be found in this TechNet article.
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Koen Vermoesen
Stijn Vermoesen
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I had big problems with y exchange and tried man things. Finally I found your manual which helped me because i also did not want to reinstall windows. I have to confirm that it works great.
Greez Chris
Yes, this works.
good one!
thanks a lot!
Koentje, stuur mij aub es een mailke met u email, ik moet u iets vragen! Thanx!
Thanks buddy..it works for me…
Koen,
Mijn Win2003 DC (met Exchange 07 installed) gaat nu rebooten nadat ik je stappenplan doorlopen heb.
Ik hoop vurig dat het werkt en dan kom ik je persoonlijke 3 dikke kussen geven!
Bedankt alvast!
Kussen??? Kan ik die niet inruilen?
;-)
funktioniert wunderbar . echt super. damit können alle alten installationen 2007-2010 entfernt werden
thank
You may get more detailed information from
http://msgsense.com/2011/01/18/manually-uninstall-last-exchange-2010-server-from-organization/
Thanks.
Hi Koen Vermoesen,
My server Exchange is dead because of broken HDD.
So, how can i delete Exchange Object on AD?
Thanks,
Hi, Step 5 in the procedure above explains just that.