In my network, there 2 Domain Controllers. In one of them I have all the FSMO roles and the other running Exchange 2003. Recently I am facing some problems in replication between the 2 DCs. AD is corrupted in the DC that is running Exchange. I tried to demote it, but was not successful. So I had to perform force demotion. After that I did metadata cleanup in the other DC. Later I promoted the previous server again as DC. After the promotion, the server is taking hours to come up and the exchange services are not running too. How can I work around this issue? Will Domain Prep / Forest Prep will fix the problem or do i have reinstall Exchange with disaster recovery switch? What will happen to all the configuration for Exchange? Like IMF , RBL filters, Policies, OWA, RPC over HTTP & SSL Certificate??

This is the reason why MS do not recommend installing Exchange on a DC. In DR scenarios demoting a DC that has Exchange on it is certainly not supported or advisable. The Exchange configuration can easily be redone according to what settings you have in your setup. You can export your SSL cert assuming IIS is still working, or extract it from your browser or local cert store using the MMC console. The same is true of the IMF which is quite basic to configure along with your policies and RPC calls. What you need to be worried about is the intergrity of the information store. Ensure you have a sound backup and reinstall exchange on a server that is NOT a DC. Your course of action first is to ensure the remaining DC is healthy with the netdiag/dcdiag switches and once you are satisified that AD is sound then introduce Exchange on its own box from a clean installation. The recover switch to my knowledge is only supported on exchange member servers that are not DC's. http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials... The above link is a step by step link to the process but you may need to make a call to MS to see if this is supported or completely flatten the box and install Exchange from fresh and restore the system state and data from your last backup.

Thanks a lot. There was problem with DNS too. The _msdsc.xxxx.com was loading from ForesTDNSZone instead of DomainDNSZone. I fixed it by ADSIedit. From the 2nd DC I have completely removed DNS before demoting it. After the demotion I did a metadata cleanup in 1st DC. Later I started 2nd DC in safe mode and disabled all the Exchange services and then started it normally. It didnt take too long to start up this time. After the it started I changed the services to automatic but didnt start them. Then I renamed the "Exchserv" folder of exchane installation to "xchsrv_bak". Then I reinstalled exchange using the disaster recovey switch and updated to SP2 using the same switch. After that I opied the EDB and STM files from the Exchsrv_bak folder to new Exchsrv frolder in the MDBDATA. The is not mounted till now. In System Manager, I stopped SMTP and checked the box "This Database can be restored" in the properties box of the Mailbox Stores. After that I tried mounting it and everything was fine. Apart from this you can restore from a backup too if the copying of EDB and STM files dont work. If anyone needs more detailed inofrmation including the links to all the above procedures and detailed events logged in the same situation, please let me. know. Sorry, I am in hurry now. I have to rush for a seminar now. Take care bye!