Installing Exchange System Manager on Windows XP - Part II

 

So there was already a great BLOG entry on this by Carol Swales What does it take to install admin only? and you are probably wondering "for cryin’ out loud, really how many entries do you need for installing ESM by itself on a workstation!"  You really only need one, I promise, but there is a corner case scenario that needs some additional explaining.

To explain it simply, if the following steps are taken as an upgrade path from XP SP1 to XP SP2, Exchange SMTP administration will be broken with the following error: "No Such Interface Supported".

1.      Install XP SP1

2.      Install IIS Snap-in (in Add/Remove Programs)

3.      Install XP SP2

4.      Install the Windows Server 2003 AdminPak

5.      Install Exchange System Manager Admin Only

Or

1.      Install XP SP1

2.      Install IIS Snap-in (in Add/Remove Programs)

3.      Install the Windows Server 2003 AdminPak

4.      Install XP SP2

5.      Install Exchange System Manager Admin Only

The reason your SMTP administration breaks is simple; you don’t have the SMTP snap-in installed.  If you’ll remember from Carol’s post she explains that on XP SP2 all you have to do is install the IIS snap-in, admin pack, and then ESM because in XP SP2 the IIS snap-in also installs the SMTP snap-in.  This is all true and good, however, if you’ve already installed the IIS snap-in PREVIOUS to installing XP SP2 you don’t get that groovy SMTP snap-in.  See, XP SP1 does not install the SMTP snap-in when you install the IIS snap-in.  However, this gets even stickier, our Exchange 2003 ESM Only setup knows you are on XP SP2 and says "hey they have the IIS snap-in installed, we know the SMTP snap-in installs with it, life is good".  Which of course, life is not.  We tried working with the IIS team to fix this and really, without going into a 20 page story about the Windows add/remove component and because Exchange 2003 setup had already shipped (you can’t fix setup in a service pack once we’ve shipped it) we were stuck with this behavior during this type of upgrade path.

Have no fear; there is a way to fix this.  You must re-install the IIS Snap-in and thus the IIS services which results in the SMTP Snap-In being installed (DLLs being registered).

OR

If you have other services in IIS you are using and you can’t do a reinstall you can manually register the following DLLs:

Seo.dll

Smtpadm.dll

Smtsnap.dll

- Amanda Langowski