XADM: Error Message Occurs When Installing Exchange 2000

When you attempt to install Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server, you may receive the following error message:

This issue can occur if you do not have Exchange Full Administrator rights when you are installing Exchange 2000.

To resolve this issue, run Setup again from an account that has the following permissions:

• Exchange Full Administrator rights. This means that you need to run setup while logged in as an Enterprise Administrator of the forest root domain, or delegate Exchange Full Administrator rights to an administrator of a child domain in which setup will be run. This delegation process must be done by a current Enterprise Administrator or a current Full Exchange Administrator.
  
  -and-
• Administrator rights on the local computer that you are installing Exchange 2000 on.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server.

During the ForestPrep operation, you are prompted to choose an account to grant Exchange Full Administrator rights to. When you install Exchange 2000 on the first server, you must use this account to run Setup. After Exchange 2000 is installed on the first server, you can use the Exchange System Manager to delegate additional accounts that have Exchange Full Administrator rights.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open the Exchange System Manager snap-in in the Microsoft Management Console (MMC).
2. Right-click Organization Name and click Delegate Control.
3. Click Next.
4. Click Add, click Browse, click the user or group that you want to delegate permissions to, and then click OK.
5. Under Role, click Exchange Full Administrator, and then click OK.
6. Click Next, and then click Finish to complete the wizard.

You can determine which account was granted Exchange Full Administrator rights during ForestPrep by examining the Exchange Server Setup Progress.log file:

1. Locate the Exchange Server Setup Progress.log file. The file is located on the root of the system drive on the computer where Setup /ForestPrep was run.
2. Open the file with a text editor such as Notepad.exe.
3. Press CTRL+END to position the cursor at the end of the file.
4. On the Edit menu, click Find.
5. In the Find What box, type PTAdministratorAccount.
6. Click Up and click Find Next.
7. Click Cancel to close the Find dialog box.
8. You should see a line that looks similar to:
   [17:13:19] PTAdministratorAccount = DOMAIN\User
   where user is the account that was granted Exchange Full Administrator rights during ForestPrep