Well RTM (Release To Manufacturing) of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are here and boy have I been a excited and busy little beaver the past week! Thus far I have only put Windows 7 RTM on to my work laptop as I’ve been pretty flat out, but it fixed a few bugs had…the smallest but most gratifying was that it now saves username and password for VPN connections properly.

So I ran into a few hiccups when installing Exchange 2007 SP1 onto Server 2008 R2 RTM, but nothing that wasn’t too hard to overcome. So I thought I would share the knowledge with anyone out there banging their head against a brick wall too.

Firstly, make sure you have IIS installed…I installed all components of the IIS package as I plan to use this server for other web related tasks, that covered all the Exchange crucial components. Check http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354.aspx for all the system requirements and command lines to install them (you can add them as roles via the GUI also though).

So once that was done, you will have to run the exchange installation in compatibility mode for Windows Vista SP2. This will get you past a stop error…but you will eventually get to the screenshot above:

Error: An error occurred. The error code was 3221684346. The message was The data area passed to a system call is too small…

It was a very vague area, but the whole installation succeeds except for installing the mailbox role. The way I eventually got around this was to then close the setup (as it has successfully installed everything but the mailbox role, it does not fail entirely). I then installed Microsoft Update and applied the Update Rollup 9 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (KB970162). After a reboot, I ran the setup from the CD again, this time with both Vista SP2 compatibility and “Run as Administrator” enabled. This will launch the change / uninstall version of the setup, from here just tick the “Mailbox Role” to re-install that roll. Then, Robert’s ya mother’s brother.