Exchange 2010 SP 1 Update Rollup 4 fixed (one of) my problem(s)!

I was finishing up the process of migrating from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 – mainly trying to get Public Folders to replicate, and while I was troubleshooting and making some minor changes, I rebooted the server and all of a sudden I was having issues with EMC and EMS. Everything else seemed to be working fine.

When I opened EMC I saw a pop up that read “MMC has detected and error in a snap-in and will unload it.” Where upon I had two options – one of which was Unload the snap-in and continue running.  After selecting that option I got an error popup that hat a title of “Unhandled Exception in Managed Code Snap-in.”  Then a string that began with FX: and then a statement “Directory ‘root’ does not existParameter name: root” and then a bunch of exceptions.

I thought – no problem – the GUI is dead – PowerShell will save the day – well maybe not…

When I opened EMS I saw all sorts of error like the following

Exception calling "TryLoadExchangeTypes" with "2" argument(s): "Directory 'root' does not exist

Parameter name: root"

At  %Exchange install path% \bin\RemoteExchange.ps1:75 char:92

+ $typeLoadResult = [Microsoft.Exchange.Configuration.Tasks.TaskHelper]::TryLoadExchangeTypes <<<< ($ManagementPath, $t

ypeListToCheck)

    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodInvocationException

    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : DotNetMethodException

The Exchange types file wasn't loaded because not all of the required files could be found.

Update-TypeData : The following error occurred while loading the extended type data file:

Microsoft.PowerShell, %Exchange install path% \bin\Exchange.partial.Types.ps1xml(80) : Error in type "Deserialized.Microsoft.Exchang

e.Management.SystemConfigurationTasks.ExchangeCertificate": Cannot convert note "TargetTypeForDeserialization":"Cannot

convert the "Microsoft.Exchange.Management.SystemConfigurationTasks.ExchangeCertificate" value of type "System.String"

to type "System.Type".".

At  %Exchange install path% \bin\RemoteExchange.ps1:104 char:16

+ Update-TypeData <<<<  -PrependPath $partialTypeFile

    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (:) [Update-TypeData], RuntimeException

    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : TypesXmlUpdateException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.UpdateTypeDataCommand

And I could do nothing – nothing at all! Logging on to another profile, installing the tools on another machine – none of that worked. Installing a MBX server on another box did finally give me some visibility but I didn’t really want to introduce another migration into the mix – especially since I was concerned there might be deeper issues.

I looked high and low for any of this on the Internet  - and couldn’t find anything.  I went through all of the PowerShell command referenced, and any of the files I could find that I remotely thought might be referenced. And I still couldn’t find anything.

So I decided to call Microsoft Support -  I spent  several days on the phone with them, and went through many things I had come across and had rejected as not applying – nothing seemed to work, and worse – the one suggestion I got to remove the Exchange Server from AD and then re-add it, killed everything – the server hung on restart.  I hate to say it but Microsoft Support sucks badly – at least at the lower levels. The guys did try hard – and if you read this I don’t blame you, I blame the system.

We were able to get it up in running in safe mode – disabled all the automatic Exchange services, reboot, and then enabled and restarted the services. When the Exchange MS support guy saw a netlogon error, he turned me over to an AD guy – who found a null value in HKLM/Sys/CCS/services/lanmanserver/parameter in the Null SessionPipes key – apparently there is an internal doc on that problem – the values he added were NETLOGON,  LSARPC, BROWSER, SAMR

That got me back to my EMC and EMS problem – oh boy!

Then my boss forwarded an email late yesterday he had about someone having problems with Exchange 2010 SP 1 Update Rollup 4 – and I thought – that must be a typo – I hadn’t seen anything about Rollup 4, I had Rollup 3 which was the latest available when I built the box. I thought – surely MS support would have suggested it….  riiiiight.

So I decided to go look – Microsoft Update didn’t find it, so I did a search found the download and ran the install. Be warned – it doesn’t run quickly. When I saw that it was extracting .net related changes – I had some hope that it would fix the problem – and sure enough it did -  without a reboot (but it does stop and start all the Exchange services)

Now back to my original public folder problems….