Where to begin? Again.... Hub Transport Install

If anyone was actually following this blog, I am sorry for ignoring it as I have. It's odd that when I've done and seen so much that would have made great posting material, I've let it slip right through and done nothing with it....

So what nugget of Exchangey goodness can I now share to get back on track with things???

Well, I thought it might be good to post on the comment I received off the last post. Actually, the comment was really off a comment/question I left on the Exchange Team Blog. It had to do with problems I encountered installing the Hub Transport server role into my environment.

While I had successfully installed the HT role in lab settings, when it came time to bring up the real thing, on the first run of Setup it would fail with an error of "Access Denied" in trying to read a path that was supposed to be within the install bits. This would happen whether using the downloaded code or the actual product DVD.

I eventually called Microsoft PSS and worked through the issue, or should I say around the issue. Basically the solution was to run the initial install and let it fail. Then run the install again and it would finish. Sounds great, but the install then never created the routing group connectors between the 2003 and 2007 systems, you had to do that manually. My problem with this solution was that if the install wasn't doing that part like it was supposed to, then what else was it not doing??

I got no good answer from MS on why this problem was occuring, just some random "could be problems reading from the media blah blah etc..." which did not answer the question of why the install is looking for a path on the media that doesn't exist. It also didn't explain why I never saw the issue in a lab using the exact same DVD. My theory is that there was something in the install code that because of the AD and network setup in my production environment was being called, or was trying to be called, that wasn't needed in the lab in a single subnet and domain environment. I do know I was not the only person to have this issue, and for that reason I'm posting about this issue.

I'm not saying the solution is a good one, but it does appear to work. And so I hope this helps someone avoid the headache with this issue that I endured.....