Installation can’t proceed until all Exchange 2003 Servers are removed

Had to extend schema before installing Exchange 2016 on a Exchange 2010 Server environment. Eventually there was an error stating Exchange schema extension can’t proceed until Exchange 2003 servers are removed. while browsing the server objects in Adsiedit.msc the exchange 2003 old object was still exist in the environment where it wasn’t uninstalled properly.Lets see how to remove it safely using adsiedit as the Exchange 2003 servers already removed from the environment.

Note : Before doing anything using adsiedit.msc . please take a full system state backup of active directory .

.\setup /PrepareSchema /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 9 Unattended Setup

Copying Files…
File copy complete. Setup will now collect additional information needed for installation.ad
Performing Microsoft Exchange Server Prerequisite Check

Prerequisite Analysis                                                                             100%

Cannot find the Recipient Update Service responsible for domain ‘DC=azure365pro,DC=com’. New and existing users may not be
properly Exchange-enabled.
For more information, visit: http://technet.microsoft.com/library(EXCHG.150)/ms.exch.setupreadiness.RusMissing.aspx

One or more servers in the existing organization are running Exchange 2000 Server or Exchange Server 2003. Installation
can’t proceed until all Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 servers are removed.
For more information, visit: http://technet.microsoft.com/library(EXCHG.150)/ms.exch.setupreadiness.Exchange2000or2003Pr
esentInOrg.aspx
The Exchange Server setup operation didn’t complete. More details can be found in ExchangeSetup.log located in the
<SystemDrive>:\ExchangeSetupLogs folder.

Solution –

In my case – Public Folder Hierarchies wasn’t moved to Exchange 2010.

Logged in to adsiedit.msc – Configuration Partition –

CN=Services,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=<ORGANIZATION>,CN=Administrative Groups,CN=first administrative group,CN=Folder Hierarchies,CN=Public Folders

CN=Services,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=<ORGANIZATION>,CN=Administrative Groups,CN=first administrative group,CN=Server,CN=Exchange 2003 object name.

Now Created a Folder Hierarchies below Exchange Administrative Group. (Right Click on Exchange Administrative Group)

Create Object – msExchPublicFolderTreeContainer , Enter Folder Hierarchies

Now Right click on CN=Public Folders . Select Move. And move to E

Now Move CN=Public Folders move to Folder Hierarchies below Exchange Administrative Group

Then Delete the Folder Hierarchies below First Administrative Group. (Which should be empty now)

Remove the Exchange 2003 Server object below servers container. and Remove the empty servers container.

Now Extend the schema . Exchange server 2016 schema will extend successfully.