XADM: Error Message: You Must Be an Exchange Full Administrator to Run Setup

When you try to set the installation option under Component Selection in the Microsoft Exchange 2000 Installation Wizard, you may receive the following error message: The installation program does not let you proceed beyond this point.

This issue can occur if the Microsoft Windows 2000 account that you use to log on does not have Exchange Full Administrator permissions in the Exchange 2000 organization.

To resolve this issue, ensure that the Windows 2000 account that the you use to log on has been granted Exchange Full Administrator permissions in the Exchange 2000 organization:

1. Start Exchange System Manager in the domain in which you ran the forestprep command. If Exchange System Manager has not been installed, you need to run Exchange 2000 Setup again in that domain to install at least Exchange System Manager.
2. In Exchange System Manager, click the organization object at the top of the tree. Right-click that organization object, and then click Delegate control.
3. In the Exchange Administration Delegation Wizard, click Add. Click the child domain administrator account, and then grant that account the Exchange Full Administrator role.
4. Click OK, and then click Finish.

If the child domain administrator account has already been granted the required role, ensure that Active Directory replication is working and has finished successfully between the domain controllers in the parent domain and the child domain.

The following are a number of reasons why the Microsoft Windows 2000 account that you use to log on may not have Exchange Full Administrator permissions in the Exchange 2000 organization:

• You may be logged on with the wrong account.
• You may not have been granted Exchange Full Administrator permissions.
• Your administrator account has been granted Exchange Full Administrator permissions from a parent domain, but the operation may not have been replicated to the child domain in which you are trying to run Setup.

For example, if your organization is upgrading Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 in a domain that has just been joined to a parent Windows 2000 domain, you have already run the forestprep command in the root domain, and the domainprep command has already been successfully run in the child domain, when you log on to the Windows 2000 Server-based computer by using the child domain administrator account and run Exchange 2000 Setup, you may receive the error message in the "Symptoms" section of this article. This occurs because the child domain administrator account has not been granted Exchange Full Administrator permissions. To grant Exchange Full Administrator permissions to the child domain administrator account, you need to run Exchange System Manager from the root domain.

If you have granted the child domain administrator account the required permissions by using the Exchange Administration Delegation Wizard, but the update operation to that child domain administrator object in Active Directory has not been replicated to the child domain, you can force Active Directory replication in the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Active Directory Sites and Services snap-in for the parent domain:

1. Click Sites, click the site name, and then click Servers.
2. Click the domain controller's name, and then click NTDS Settings.
3. In the right pane, click the connection object that links the parent domain's domain controller to the child domain's domain controller, right-click that connection object, and then click Replicate Now.

In a few minutes, the required updates are replicated to the child domain.