Exchange 2007 sp2 upgrade failure

I was upgrading a customer of ours to Exchange 2007 sp2 I encountered an error that stomped me for a little while. The error occurred during the /PrepareAD Duplicate AcceptedDomain found. Ok just run the GUI and all will be fine. The GUI setup will automatically do the AD prep for you. Errrrroooor The accepted domain already exists. What the F… Ah the exchange setuplog will hold the clue.

This is what I got:
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [2] Processing object "d8bf2a74-f28f-448a-8cfa-53d364a9eb84".
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [2] [ERROR] Unexpected Error
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [2] [ERROR] The accepted domain <DomainName>.com already exists.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [2] Ending processing.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] The following 1 error(s) occurred during task execution:
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] 0.  ErrorRecord: The accepted domain mages-touch.com already exists.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] 0.  ErrorRecord: Microsoft.Exchange.Management.SystemConfigurationTasks.DuplicateAcceptedDomainException: The accepted domain <DomainName>.com already exists.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] [ERROR] The accepted domain <DomainName>.com already exists.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] Setup is halting task execution because of one or more errors in a critical task.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] Finished executing component tasks.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] Ending processing.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [0] The Exchange Server Setup operation did not complete. For more information, visit http://support.microsoft.com and enter the Error ID.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [0] End of Setup

Bing and google both had no anwsers to this. Neither did MS support site.

Ok the domain is my domain so what the f.. It’s late and the customer isn’t their so I’ll rename the accepted domain name and then change it back. No way, logically so but it was worth a try. I’ll use ADSIEdit. Goto the configuration container -> Services -> Microsoft Exchange -> <DomainName>.com -> Transport Settings -> Accepted Domains and I selected the object and clicked edit. Next I went to the attribute msExchAcceptedDomainName and the value was *.<DomainName>.com. Is the “*.” causing the problem? In earlier versions of exchange we used the *.DomainName to except all sub domains. In Exchange 2007 things changed it was not required any more but it still works. So I still come accros this in Exchange 2007 implementations.

Removing the “*.” allowed me to upgrade the server without any problems.

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