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Any advice for installing SP4 for Exchange 5.5?

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Any advice for installing SP4 for Exchange 5.5? - 30.Mar.2006 2:39:16 PM

andyc_selway

Posts: 5
Joined: 30.Mar.2006
Status: offline

Hello Exchange gurus,

I have Exchange 5.5 Standard Edition (service pack 3) running on a Windows NT 4.0 (service pack 6a).

I would like to apply Exchange service pack 4 but (as I'm relatively new to Exchange server) wanted to ask if there are any potential issues I might come across. Any pre-work I should do before applying the service pack?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Andy.

Post #: 1

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RE: Any advice for installing SP4 for Exchange 5.5? - 31.Mar.2006 9:20:20 AM

zbnet

Posts: 1019
Joined: 25.Sep.2003
From: York, UK
Status: offline

Andy

This is an old server! If you've never done Exchange support before, you need to tread carefully. I hope you've got a bood book on Exchange 5.5, and good documentation of your current system. Unfortunately all the 5.5 knowledge you need to aquire over the next few months will really be wasted as this technology is so old.

Before you upgrade to SP4, you need to take good backups. In fact, I recommend the DR whitepaper as your most important reading if you have support responsibilities for a 5.5 server. The server has been running quite happily on SP3 for some years now, so a few more weeks won't hurt, whilst you get up to speed. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/55/support/exdisrec.mspx

When you do get round to installing SP4, you'll also need the post-SP4 rollup hotfix (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=841765), and then probably at least the security hotfix mentioned in http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms06-003.mspx as well.

(in reply to andyc_selway)

Post #: 2

RE: Any advice for installing SP4 for Exchange 5.5? - 31.Mar.2006 5:57:24 PM

andyc_selway

Posts: 5
Joined: 30.Mar.2006
Status: offline

Thanks for the reply zbnet.

The DR white paper looks excellent reading.

Yes this is a very old server. Ideally I'd like to move to something else but I'll meet with resistance because the user base has been "hooked" on the built in group/calendering features of Exchange.

Meanwhile I need to build a DR server lab and prove the backups work. I won't attempt putting SP4 on until I am confident the backups are good.

Regards,

Andy.

(in reply to zbnet)

Post #: 3

RE: Any advice for installing SP4 for Exchange 5.5? - 1.Apr.2006 9:18:36 PM

Exchange_Admin

Posts: 376
Joined: 23.Feb.2003
From: Texas
Status: offline

The above comments are very good but I would like to add to them.
1. as was said above, make sure that you have a good backup prior to starting.
2. Stop all MAPI enabled services. Examples of these are anti-virus services, UPS services (some UPS programs send an email if there is a power outage).
3. Apply the Exchange service pack.
4. Run the performance optimizer after the installation. You do not have to change any of the settings but it is always a good idea to do this after installing a service pack. The performance optimizer does much more that just move database files around. I have had customers in the past that had problems such as they could not delete more than 1 email message at a time. After running performance optimizer, this issue was resolved.

(in reply to andyc_selway)

Post #: 4