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Exchange 2003 cannot find Global Catalog Server

Here's the situation. It was working fine until I upgraded my Windows 2000 AD to Windows 2003. Somehow, after I upgraded my 3 domain controllers from Windows 2000 to Windows 2003, Exchange 2003 cannot see any global catalog server on the Network. I made sure that I added Global Catalog as a role on one of my 3 Domain Controllers through NTDS. I also tried dcpromo on the Exchange 2003 box itself and made it a global catalog server but still, Exchange 03 cannot see any global catalog servers. DNS lookup is fine. What could cause this issue?.

mass2612

Have you tried restarting the Exchange services? Exchange will look for its GC server during the services startup. What error messages are yu seeing? You might want to have a look through these articles.

http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid43_gci1197212,00.html

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;250570

aznxbandit

ASKER

Both links show the same information which I already tried. I tried statically assigning a GC server and DC in the registry. Exchange Event viewer has MSExchangeDSAcess infromation saying :

Process EMSMTA.EXE (PID=2428). No Global Catalog server is up in the local site..

Where in fact, I even configured all my DCs as global catalogs. Still a no go.

mass2612

Does dcdiag and netdiag give any errors when run from the Exchange server and domain controller?

aznxbandit

ASKER

After talking to a microsoft support professional, my problem got fixed. It turned out that when I upgraded my domain cotrollers to Windows 2003, it wiped out the Domain Security Policy settings. I restored the security settings by running setup /domainprep... Works now. Thanks for the comments. I hope this helps other people who will encounter such problems soon. Luckily, I will no longer be dealing with Microsoft in the future. I am moving to a Native Linux environment. (New Job).. :) Chao..

mass2612

Good news. Can you post the links to any MS articles that you may have used?

aznxbandit

ASKER

Here it is....

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;919089&sd=rss&spid=1773

mass2612

Thanks.

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