SNRequip
asked on
Exchange 2003 uninstall canclled part way through
Hi,
Just because I wasn't busy enough today I thought I'd do something really stupid to liven things up...
We traditionally run a single Excahnge 2003 Standard (on a Windows 2003 SP1 Server) server called Mailserver (original I know, in my defense I inherited it). It is a vanilla installation as in all the defaults where selecting naming convention wise. A while back I added a second Exchange server to the 1st Administrative group called Mailserveralt (that name is my fault). At that point it was more an exersise to check the feasibility of a few things so all I did to it was move a couple of mailboxes to it and then move them back to the first server, so no routing, bridgehead etc... configuration on the Mailserveralt server.
I needed to remove the Mailserveralt installation to resue the HDD elesewhere so checked the process and kicked off using the Microsoft recommeded process which is extremely straight forward. Part way through I had an irrational panic and decided I needed to check double check what I was doing so cancelled the uninstall process i.e.: after the actual uninstall process was occuring figuring that, you know, it would cancel it and roll things back. DOH! Pretty much everything is still there (including all the information in System Manager) except there is no longer an entry in the Add/Remove Programs for me to rerun the uninstall process...
Is this going to be a case of doing a manual uninstall (i.e.: deleting registry settings etc) or is there a clever way out?
(seriously thinking of competing for the Darwin awards next year...)
Just because I wasn't busy enough today I thought I'd do something really stupid to liven things up...
We traditionally run a single Excahnge 2003 Standard (on a Windows 2003 SP1 Server) server called Mailserver (original I know, in my defense I inherited it). It is a vanilla installation as in all the defaults where selecting naming convention wise. A while back I added a second Exchange server to the 1st Administrative group called Mailserveralt (that name is my fault). At that point it was more an exersise to check the feasibility of a few things so all I did to it was move a couple of mailboxes to it and then move them back to the first server, so no routing, bridgehead etc... configuration on the Mailserveralt server.
I needed to remove the Mailserveralt installation to resue the HDD elesewhere so checked the process and kicked off using the Microsoft recommeded process which is extremely straight forward. Part way through I had an irrational panic and decided I needed to check double check what I was doing so cancelled the uninstall process i.e.: after the actual uninstall process was occuring figuring that, you know, it would cancel it and roll things back. DOH! Pretty much everything is still there (including all the information in System Manager) except there is no longer an entry in the Add/Remove Programs for me to rerun the uninstall process...
Is this going to be a case of doing a manual uninstall (i.e.: deleting registry settings etc) or is there a clever way out?
(seriously thinking of competing for the Darwin awards next year...)
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Glad to hear you got it sorted.
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ASKER
Nope, not a lot I care about on this box, more concerned with protential damage to the rest of the AD Structure. Exchange Mail Servers make me a bit nervous due to their tight integration with AD. While I do have System State backups etc... I rather not have to use them in the real world.
Wound up running the setup.exe from the installation disk and just re running the uninstall. Worked just fine. As all my e-mail services where still runing I should have applied my "go away and have a cup of coffee before doing anything" rule before firing off an e-mail to the experts.
Easy points for you, sometimes nice just to have a calming voice (and no breaking of fingers required)