Domainprep utility does not work if Exchange Enterprise Servers group and Exchange Domain Servers group moved to a new container

If the Exchange Enterprise Servers, Exchange Services, and Exchange Domain Servers groups are not in the user container when you run the setup command, Setup may not work, and you may receive the following error message: If you move the Exchange Enterprise Servers, Exchange Services, and Exchange Domain Servers groups back to the user container and then retry the domainprep command, Setup is completed successfully.

The Exchange Enterprise Servers and Exchange Domain Servers groups are created when you run the domainprep command to prepare a domain for the installation of Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server. The Exchange Services group is created during the installation of Active Directory Connector (ADC).

You may also see that the System Attendant is not started, but it is in a "starting" state. The following event will be logged in the application event log every minute:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: MSExchangeSA
Event Category: General
Event ID: 9157
Date: 11/23/2003
Time: 2:08:38 PM
User: N/A
Computer: EXCHANGE1
Description: Microsoft Exchange System Attendant does not have sufficient rights to read Exchange configuration objects in Active Directory. Wait for replication to complete and then check to make sure the computer account is a member of the "Exchange Domain Servers" security group.

This problem occurs because Setup searches for these groups in only the default user container. If these groups are not in the default user container, Setup determines that the groups do not exist.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 require that the Exchange Enterprise Servers, Exchange Services, and the Exchange Domain Servers groups be in the default user container. If these groups are not in the default user container, you cannot run the Setup program to add or remove components.

If you move these groups, you receive an error message that is similar to the following error message when you try to run Setup: In the Setup.log file, an error that is similar to the following error is logged: In the application event log, the following event is logged:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: MSExchangeSA
Event Category: General
Event ID: 9188
User: N/A
Computer: Server name
Description:
Microsoft Exchange System Attendant failed to read the membership of group 'cn=Exchange Domain Servers,cn=Users,dc=your domain'. Error code '80072030'.

Check whether the local computer is a member of the group. If it is not, stop all the Microsoft Exchange services, add the local computer to the group manually and restart all the services.

For more information, click http://search.support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1.

For additional information about redirecting the default containers for security groups, users accounts and computer accounts, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Note If you follow the steps in Knowledge Base article 324949, you will have to manually move the two groups back to the Default Users Container. The two groups that you have to move are Exchange Domain Servers Group and Exchange Enterprise Servers Group.