[ActiveDir] Exchange 5.5 Upgrade Problems

[Dan DeStefano]

I have taken over administration of a w2k AD domain running Exchange 5.5. This domain was a mess and it took a lot of doing just to resolve all the errors in the event logs, but now they are just about all resolved and the DC/Ex5.5 server passes all netdiag/dcdiag tests.   My current project is to upgrade the Ex5.5 server (which is also the domain’s only DC) to Ex2k3, but I am running into problems. I have successfully run Forestprep and Domainprep. However, when I attempt to run the installation, I receive the error “Exchange… cannot be assigned the task “upgrade” because… the directory database is in an inconsistent state… the private and or public stores are in an inconsistent state”. However, when using Eseutil to check database consistency of all 3 databases, it reports that they are consistent. Even so, I tried using Eseutil to: repair all 3 DBs and perform soft recovery on all 3 DBs, but nothing worked. I then ran every test/repair using isinteg, all of which completed successfully and only some of which reported errors. However, nothing has worked and I am still getting the same errors when trying to upgrade. I also upgraded the ADC to the Ex2k SP3 version, which had no effect.   Now my plan is to install a new WS2k3/Ex2k3 server into the Ex5.5 organization, move all mailboxes to it, then decommission the old Ex5.5 box. While waiting for my maintenance window to upgrade the current ADC to the 2k3 version, I installed EX2k3 ADC on the new mail server (which is not a DC). Now, when I try to run the “Data collection” step in ADC tools on the new ws2k3 box, I receive the error “Server <myserver>:389 is not an Exchange 5.5 server or an SRS service”. I realized that since it was installed on a DC that the LDAP port in ADC was changed to 38900, so I changed it in ADC tools. However, I am now receiving the error “Could not connect to server <myserver>:38900 with LDAP error 6.  Check server name, port number and account permissions”. I am logged on with the Enterprise/Domain Administrator account and the ADC service is set to use the same service account as the ADC on the Ex5.5 server.   If you need any more info please let me know. Any help that anyone can provide will be greatly appreciated.     Dan DeStefano Info-lution Corporation www.info-lution.com MCSE - 2073750   If you have received this message in error please notify the sender, disregard any content  and remove it from your possession.