While uninstalling Exchange 2003 I was getting the error “you cannot remove a server that is a target bridgehead for a routing group connector. This server is a target bridgehead for the following connections”.I deleted the connector on the Exchange 2003 server, but I still received the uninstall error. This post clued me in that I should be looking for something on the new Exchange 2010 server, and after performing a Remove-RoutingGroupConnectorin the Exchange console I was able to uninstall (though just be sure to have that Exchange 2003 ISO laying about).

Update:After only having the stat tracker running for two days on my site, this post has turned up as being disproportionately popular so I figured I’d post another note on my uninstall experience with this Exchange 2003 server: I ended up having to manually uninstall it in this case and then had to remove entries from active directory using ADSI edit that were subsequently causing errors on the new Exchange server.  I know the post I relied on over on Microsoft’s forum had follow-ups that said to absolutely not do that, but it was the only thing that worked.  Use at your own risk, of course.

I believe, if I remember correclty, that  the issue that led to this result was the fact that I just couldn’t remove the stores from the 2003 server.

I’ve upgraded our Exchange 2007 setup to Exchange 2010 and two irksome issues cropped up that sponged up a great deal of my time:

• First, when I was moving users (aka ‘local move’) in a remote domain from the Exchange 2007 server to the Exchange 2010 server I was receiving the ‘insuff_access_rights’ error and I was unable to move the mailbox*.  Eventually I did have to do the ’include inheritable permissions’ checkbox on most of the users, but since that didn’t work right away I investigated quite a bit more before finding that the permissions for various ‘Exchange’ entries at the root of the remote domain within active directory users and computers were “goofed”.  Things went more smoothly after setting the matching entries to (about) the same permissions as the ones at the host domain.
• I couldn’t uninstall Exchange 2007 since it was hosting unremovable folders on the public folder database (‘Internet Newsgroups’, etc.).  I tried to do things the right way, but wound up resorting to the ADSI edit tip here.

*By the way, I liked the ‘cached move’ method in Exchange 2010, but why can I clear out the flags for successful moves in the GUI, but I have to resort to a painful command line method if it fails? (Which, it failed for me a lot while working on it).