Manually Uninstall/Remove Exchange Server 2016 Standard

The recommended way is to uninstall from control panel --> Programs.
Did you try to uninstall from programs?

Subsequently running Setup.exe showed me that I forgot to select the Edge Transport role and the UI would not let me modify my selections to add it.

Just a note...Edge Transport is *not* necessary for mail flow in Exchange 2016. There is no role separation at all in 2016. CAS, HUB, and MBX roles are all installed. Edge Transport is used for spam filtering and mailflow control *outside* of the Exchange Environment. Think of it as a Spam appliance. It cannot be installed if any other Exchange roles are installed on the server, and it should only be installed on servers that are not part of the domain.

I installed Exchange Server 2016 Standard on a Windows Server 2016 Standard machine.  Both are fresh installs but now I have all of my data transferred from the old server to the new one so I would love to not have to build both again to clear up the problem.  :)

I don't fully understand what you're saying here, so please clarify...Are you saying that you installed Exchange 2016 and moved your existing mailboxes over to it from a different version of Exchange? Or have you copied files over from another server for file sharing? Is this a lab setup or a production environment?

I decided to uninstall Exchange and start over.  That didn't work however and the uninstall did not complete successfully.  Not remembering that I was an EE member, I tried to manually delete the files/directories and then restart the Setup.exe to re-install.

However, I got all the way down to one program that I cannot delete.  It is in use according to Windows so the installs are not running correctly as it still thinks that Exchange is in a partial install state.

I hate to tell you this, but you probably need to rebuild the server and force remove the Exchange server from AD as Saif suggests, then rebuild the server to get things back to normal here. Removing Exchange server files and binaries manually is a *bad* idea if you ever want to use that server install again. Exchange is extremely finicky and if it isn't set up properly you can end up with really weird issues that you will have a very hard time figuring out. A failed Exchange Install/Uninstall usually requires a server rebuild to fix, simply because you don't want to install Exchange when there are pieces that might still exist on the server from a previous install. If you can pull your data off the server and rebuild, that's your best bet. If you migrated mailboxes already, you'll need to perform a database recovery after reinstalling to get things working.

Hi Adam,

I have another issue then.  I thought I had setup this new server to be identical (send and receive connectors) to the old one and yet mail is not flowing in or out.  :(

The data I am speaking of is my documents and other user-related files.  Nothing pertaining to the Exchange Server.  I just don't want to have to copy everything off again and then back on again.

I was afraid it was going to come to that.  :(  I have the means of copying the data off again but it takes so much time.

The server is to replace an existing, older server, with failing hardware so the race is on as to who will get done first, the failing hardware or the new sever.  lol

MAS

>> The recommended way is to uninstall from control panel --> Programs.
>> Did you try to uninstall from programs?

Yes, that was how I tried initially but when that didn't work, I tried to simply delete the files manually and when that didn't work, I opened the ticket in EE.

Guess I should have opened the ticket first.  :)

Send connectors are organizational, so you don't have to recreate them. They will be usable by the new server without issue. You just need to modify the connector and set it so the new server is included in the list of servers that can use it. The receive connector part is a little weirder, but may be due to some configuration settings outside of your 2016 server. For instance, if you have a spam filtering appliance in the works, it may need to be set to accept email from the new server before it will work properly (Barracudas are bad about this). This is partially due to weirdness with Exchange's internal routing, which is difficult to control. If you already had the new server set to use the send connector and whatever systems the mail goes through aren't also set to allow that server to send through it, the new server will queue mail until the spam filter allows it to send (It won't get re-routed through the other server).

Receive connectors aren't used by backend exchange, so incoming mail should route from the old server to the new server if the target mailbox is mounted on the new server, but this may fail if the receive connectors are misconfigured. You don't want to directly copy the receive connectors from server to server. In general, the default receive connectors will serve most purposes for normal email routing, and if incoming email isn't pointed at the server directly, it will go through the other server first, then route using Exchange back-end routing. That functions according to the Active Directory Sites and Services setup, so if that isn't set right (with subnets assigned to sites) it can cause routing issues for email.

Saif,

Thanks for the link.  I might give that a try before rebuilding the entire server from scratch.  If I end up with any "residual" issues as Adam suggest I might, then I'll end up rebuilding the entire server anyway.  lol

Thank you to all who responded to this issue.  And special thanks to Saif Shaikh who provided the solution that I needed.

My apologies for taking so long to get this done but I had some other things get in the way of a speedy handling of this issue.