So by now I am ready to do Exchange 2010

Firstly, I cannot commend too highly the script that I found at Automated prerequisite installation Exchange Server 2010

This script, one you have a fully patched Windows Server 2008 R2 installation gives you a quick setup to add the necessary pre-requisites on the server to start the Exchange 2010.  If you already have the Update Rollup 3 for Exchange 2010 and the 64bit filter pack then copy these to c:\innervation on your server so that the downloads are not done again.

Run the script and you can quickly install everything you need before you hit the Exchange 2010 DVD.

If you read my blog then you will have already seen in my previous post that I have lost loads of time already on this project so was running out of time to do a clean Exchange 2010 and get back to ‘real’ work.

So having done the pre-reqs the install got going and seemed to run smoothly.  Immediately after install I hit the server with Update Rollup 3, but however on reboot of the new server, despite everything starting fine in the services arena, the console would not find the other servers in my network, although it could see various settings and my mailboxes.  Hmm.

I ran some quick diagnostics and got nowhere.  For now I just wanted to bail out.  So I decided to uninstall to preserve my sanity and start again another day.

Uninstall is interesting though – read this - Error when uninstalling Exchange 2010 you need to uninstall the Rollup first.

So this weekend, I am retiring hurt :-)