Many of us have already felt the bitter taste of a failed Exchange Setup. Sometimes re-running the setup puts us back on track, but other times is necessary some basic troubleshooting. If this is the case, the best place to start is the Exchange Setup Logs:
- \ExchangeSetupLogs\ExchangeSetup.log: Tracks progress of every task performed during Setup; contains details on pre-requisite checks, installation progress, and configuration changes made by Setup
- \ExchangeSetupLogs\ExchangeSetup.msilog: Windows Installer log file that contains details on extraction of Exchange code from installer file (ExchangeServer.msi)
The following cmdlet can be used to generate a list of only the errors and warnings logged during setup and present the results in an indented tree format:
- Get-SetupLog.ps1 C:\ExchangeSetupLogs\ExchangeSetup.log -error -tree
The Exchange setup process keeps a ‘Watermark’ entry in registry (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\v8.0\\), to make it easier to resume in case of a failure. If a Watermark is present after a failed setup, note for which role, then run the following cmdlet to complete the installation:
Setup.com /roles: