Exchange Server 2007: Problems during PrepareAD

I was all set last Thursday to upgrade my Active Directory schema for my Exchange Server 2007 implementation. I opted to use the GUI for installing one of the servers. If all prerequisites are met, the GUI installation normally upgrades the schema and prepares the domain for Exchange Server 2007.

I ran into a glitch during the preparation process. I got the following error, and the preparation failed:

CN=All Groups,CN=All Address Lists,CN=Address Lists Container,CN=,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=, DC= The object already exists.

To take a closer look, I ran setup.com from the command line using the /PrepareSchema switch and it was successful. No problem there. Next, I proceeded with the /PrepareAD switch.
This is where the above error message surfaced.

I opened up ADSIEDIT and found the above object in the Configuration partion. The All Groups object is an Exchange 2003 view that lists out all the distribution groups in your organization in the GAL. Probably there was some change done to the object which Exchange 2007 Setup did not understand. So, in order to let Exchange 2007 create its own "All Groups" object, I renamed the existing object to "All Groups1".

The organization preparation process now completed without a glitch, and it created its own "All Groups" container.

Of course, this will result in two "All Groups" showing up in the GAL in Outlook, so you might want to delete the older one eventually.


A word of caution here - this post, like all my other posts does not carry any endorsement from Microsoft. This happened to work well for me, and is my based on my belief and understanding of the implications.