Exchange 2003, 2007 & 2010 Topology discovery failed, error 0x80040a02 (DSC_E_NO_SUITABLE_CDC)
Posted on July 17, 2010
A client has been struggling with Exchange 2003 for some time now and I've got the project to roll out Exchange 2010. The first hurdle I come to is a new incarnation of a pre-existing problem from Exchange 2003 - simply put "Can't find a domain controller". Which means it can't mount the Information Store. Brill.
You'll need to edit the Default Domain Controllers Policy in Group Policy.
- Computer Configuration
- Windows Settings
- Security Settings
- User Rights Assignment
- Mange auditing and security log
Add "Exchange Servers" or "Exchange Enterprise Servers" to that policy.
gpupdate /force on the domain controller and restart the Exchange Services
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So you are lazy and don't want to waste valuable seconds of your life connecting...
August 9th, 2010 - 08:03
Hi !
This is very nice article about topology issues in exchange server. Few days ago i have faced such types issues with my exchange server. these days i was very frustrated about this. i just go for a software that resolve my problems easily. i found a software over Google that works really good and it was very effectively at :: http://www.exchange-recovery.org
October 26th, 2010 - 03:46
Make sure IP6 is enabled in the NIC.
March 27th, 2011 - 22:19
The next time I read a weblog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as much as this one. I mean, I know it was my option to read, however I truly thought youd have something fascinating to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you could repair when you werent too busy looking for attention.
April 6th, 2011 - 11:52
Thanks for the info, I can never remember where the changes need to be made when I hit this problem.
June 18th, 2011 - 13:14
Thanks for the tip (Tim helped too)
August 31st, 2011 - 16:31
Just wanted to add that the policy is located at:
Computer Configuration
Windows Settings
Security Settings
+Local Policies
User Rights Assignment
Mange auditing and security log
August 31st, 2011 - 19:28
2 days trying to figure out what the problem was after promoting our domain from 2008 Functional level to 2008R2. Every 24 hours the Exchange services didn’t start with ” Topology” errors. Only thing to fix it was to run Exchange 2003 SP2 command ” update /DomainPrep ”
24 hours later, same problem. Exchange broken.
Exchange Domain Servers was missing from that group policy. Not sure if the promotion to 2008R2 deleted that, or if it was not necessary for Exchange 2003 SP2 to live in a Windows 2008 domain…
Thanks a lot for your blog.
October 1st, 2011 - 02:40
I found out the hard way that you have to add this to EVERY policy for it to ‘take affect’. Go figure – the best tool for testing is the policytest.exe which comes on the 2003 exchange disk (it should be in the support folder). I had trouble for 2 hours before finding this post. Thanks so much!
March 3rd, 2012 - 20:22
Yep, this fixed my situation too. Thanks for posting as M$ leads you down a bunch of different paths to resolve this issue. I had the issue on a reboot “applying computer settings” hang. No matter what I tried, the server would not give me the login screen Your suggestions fixed the issue within seconds. Services started and the server gave the login screen. Hurray!
May 16th, 2012 - 17:54
Hi David,
I’m on the same situation as you, hanging on reboot and services not starting. And in adittion, I cant connect trhu TS.
I have the default domain controller policy correctly.
The only thing that I did on the servers, was to remove a NLB Cluster…