Exchange 2003 setup failures

This past week, I tackled a problem that really kicked my behind for a few days. I was installing a new Exchange 2003 server in to an existing Exchange 5.5 organization. Windows 2003 Service Pack 1. The forest had been prepped and so had all of the domains. Lots of time for replication to occur. The user I was logging in with had all the necessary administrative permissions. All the prereqs had been met.

However, about 2 - 3 minutes after the install started, I got the following message:

Setup failed while installing sub-component Microsoft Exchange Organization-Level Container Object with error code 0xC1037AE6 (please consult the installation logs for a detailed description). You may cancel the installation or try the failed step again.


Clicking retry was, of course, a worthless endeavour. When I clicked Cancel, the setup continued. However, the Exchange server had lots of problems. MTA would not start. The store was generating EXOLEDB errors.

The Exchange Setup Log had a couple of interesting, but worthless entries when this happened.

[12:43:56] Configuring Administrative Rights
[12:43:56] Entering ScInstallLDIFScript
[12:43:56] ScRunLDIFScript (f:\titanium\admin\src\libs\exsetup\exmisc.cxx:1309) Error code 0xC1037AE6 (31462): Extending the schema in the Active Directory failed. Please consult the error log LDIF.ERR in your TEMP directory.

These errors suggested that the problem might be related to forestprep, but forestprep was already run. The LDIF.ERR file was also not in the directory that the TEMP variable pointed to.

After completely removing and re-installing the organization and the server a couple of times and redoing /forestprep and /domainprep, I stumbled across a KB article (870829) that recommended checking to see if my TEMP environmental variable had a space in it. Sure enough, my TEMP variable had spaces in the folder names. I changed the user's TEMP and TMP variables to C:\WINDOWS\TEMP and the install ran like a charm.

From what I can figure, the very first time I was running this, the setup program was creating the CN=Addressing containers under the Exchange organization in the directories Configuration partition. The Exchange Setup program uses the template.ldf file to create everything necessary in this container. This looks like where it was bombing when the setup was trying to run LDIFDE.

I know I have run Exchange 2003 setups via RDP under very similar circumstances, but I have never experienced this before. This set me back nearly 2 days. Eeeks!

For more information, see:
Setup with the /forestprep switch does not succeed, and you receive a 0xC1037AE6 error message