XADM: System Attendant Does Not Start After Installing Exchange 2000 Server in a Grandchild Domain in an Exchange Enterprise Environment

When you set up an Exchange topology that consists of a parent domain controller, several child domains, and a grandchild domain, and then install Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server on a Microsoft Windows 2000-based member server in the grandchild domain, the system attendant (Mad.exe) may not start when you log on after the computer restarts. The following message is displayed in the Event Viewer: The Exchange 2000 servers and Exchange Administrator groups for the grandchild domain are not added to the Exchange container or the organization object.

This behavior can occur when the permissions set by the first Exchange 2000 server are modified and overwritten with the data from the second server during replication that occurs during the same time frame. This can occur when you install an additional Exchange 2000 server in another domain before the configuration objects of the first installation of Exchange 2000 Server in the grandchild domain have propagated throughout the entire Exchange organization.

To work around this issue, allow full replication of an Exchange 2000 server to propagate throughout the entire Exchange organization before installing an additional Exchange 2000 server.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server.