Firstly I need to apologize for the delay between posts, I have been attending to some business which kept me away and will acknowledge next time should I expect a large gap again.

You must ensure you meet the prerequisites before you attempt this and they are as follows:

• If you have Exchange Full Administrator permissions at the administrative group level, you can uninstall Exchange Server 2003, provided that you have permissions for the administrative group to which the server belongs.

• If there are any mailboxes assigned to a storage group on a server, you cannot uninstall Exchange Server 2003 from that server. In this case, you must either move or delete the mailboxes before you can uninstall Exchange.

• You cannot uninstall Exchange Server 2003 from a server if it is the only server in your organization running the Recipient Update Service. Instead, you must first use Exchange System Manager to enable the Recipient Update Service on another server.

• You cannot uninstall Exchange Server 2003 from a server if it is the only server in a mixed administrative group that is running Site Replication Service (SRS). Instead, you must first enable SRS on another Exchange server.

• You cannot uninstall Exchange Server 2003 from a server if it is a bridgehead server for a connector and there are other Exchange servers in your organization. Instead, you must first designate a new bridgehead server.

• You cannot uninstall Exchange Server 2003 from a server if it is the routing master and there are other Exchange servers in your organization. Instead, you must first designate a new routing master.

Now before you remove the server from a production environment that has multiple servers in the administrative group, understand that you need to know all the servers roles that are held by this machine. Make sure you move your roles to other machines. Example: If the server is listed as a bridgehead server on a connector you will have to move this before uninstall will work. Failure to do this could cause many things including the following:

• Mail flow may stop if the server is a bridgehead server.

• Mail flow will be totally screwed if the server is the routing group master.

• Outlook issue and OWA issues so confirm and check before attempting the uninstall.

Before you remove Exchange 2003, you must disconnect all mailbox-enabled users from the mailboxes on the Exchange server. It is not possible to remove an Exchange Server when it has mounted mailboxes. If you are getting this error check out the following “One or more users currently use this mailbox store. These users must be moved to a different mailbox store or be mail disabled before deleting this store”A good way to try to find these missing users is to use Active Directory Users and Computers. Here’s what to do:

1. Run ADUC.(Active Directory Users and computers – come on!)

2. Right-click your domain at the top, and choose Find.

3. Click the Advanced tab, and then choose User from the Field button.

4. From the list of attributes displayed, choose Exchange Home Server.

5. Set the Condition field to Ends With and then type your Exchange server name into the Value field. Click Add to add this value.

6. Now click the Find button, and hopefully you’ll see the troublesome user listed in the results window.

You should then be able to remove the Exchange attributes from these user accounts and proceed with the un install.

To uninstall Exchange Server 2003

1. Log on to the server from which you want to uninstall Exchange.
2. Click Start, point to Control Panel, and then click Add or Remove Programs.
3. In Add or Remove Programs, select Microsoft Exchange, and then click Change/Remove.
4. On the Welcome to the Microsoft Exchange Installation Wizard page, click Next.
5. On the Component Selection page, in the Action column, use the drop-down arrows to select Remove, and then click Next.

Follow the bouncing ball and Exchange should uninstall.