This week, Microsoft has released KnowledgeBase article 2872882 today, detailing a situation where you’d receive an “Organization Preparation FAILED” error when you try to Prepare the Active Directory for Exchange Server 2007 or Exchange Server 2010.

The situation

When you try to prepare Active Directory for Exchange Server 2007 or Exchange Server 2010, during the automated installation or while manually preparing it through setup.exe /PrepareAD, you might receive the following error:

Configuring Microsoft Exchange Server
Organization Preparation   FAILED
The following error was generated when "$error.Clear();
install-ResourceConfig -DomainController $RoleDomainController" was run: "Active Directory operation failed on <Domain Controller>. This
error is not retriable. Additional information: The parameter is incorrect. Active directory response: 00000057: LdapErr: DSID-0C090D11, comment: Error in attribute conversion operation, data 0, v23f0".The Exchange Server setup operation didn't complete. More details can be found in ExchangeSetup in the <SystemDrive>:\ExchangeSetupLogs folder.

When you check the ExchangeSetup.log file (typically) in the C:\ExchangeSetupLogs folder, you find the following lines:

[Time] [2] [ERROR] Active Directory operation failed on dc. domain.com. This error is not retriable. Additional information: The parameter is incorrect.
Active directory response: 00000057: LdapErr: DSID-0C090B38, comment: Error in attribute conversion operation, data 0, vece
[Time] [2] [ERROR] The requested attribute does not exist

Note:
In the above error, the actual hostname for the Domain Controller and Active Directory Domain name have been substituted with generic values to protect the innocent.

Installation of Exchange Server fails.

The cause

This issue occurs because the lDAPDisplayName attributes for ms-Exch-Resource-Schema and ms-Exch-Resource-Property-Schema are incorrect.

The resolution

To resolve this situation, you will need to perform these steps:

1. Open Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) Edit. To do this, click Start, type ADSIEdit.msc, and then click OK.Note:
   On pre-Windows Server 2008 Domain Controllers, use Start + R.
2. After the ADSI Edit window is loaded, right-click ADSI Edit in the navigation pane, and then click Connect To.
3. In the Connection Settings window, click Select a well known Naming Context in the Connection Point area, and then click Schema.
4. Expand the Schema [DC.domain.com] node, and then click CN=Schema, CN=Configuration,DC=domain,DC=com.     Note:
   Substitute the values for domain and com to your values.
5. In the result pane, right-click CN= ms-Exch-Resource-Schema, click Property, and then change the value of the lDAPDisplayName attribute to msExchResourceSchema.
6. In the result pane, right-click ms-Exch-Resource-Property-Schema, click Property, and then change the value of the lDAPDisplayName attribute to msExchResourcePropertySchema.
7. Close Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) Edit.

In environments with multiple Domain Controllers, force Active Directory replication between them with the following command:

1. Open Active Directory Sites and Services. To do this, click Start, type DSSite.msc and then click OK.Note:
   On pre-Windows Server 2008 Domain Controllers, use Start + R.
2. After the Active Directory Sites and Services windows is loaded, in the console tree, expand Sites, and then expand the site to which you want to force replication from the updated server.

1. Expand the Servers container to display the list of servers that are currently configured for that site.
2. Expand the server objects and click their NTDS Settings objects to display their connection objects in the details pane. Find a server that has a connection object from the server on which you made the updates.
3. Click NTDS Settings below the server object. In the details pane, right-click the connection object whose From Server is the Domain Controller that has the updates that you want to replicate, and then click Replicate Now.
4. When the Replicate Now message box appears, review the information, and then click OK.

Now, run the Setup.exe /PrepareAD command to prepare Active Directory for Exchange Server 2007 and/or Exchange Server 2010 again. It will succeed.

Related KnowledgeBase articles

2872882 "Organization Preparation FAILED" error when you install Exchange Server
948214 You may receive an "error code 8202" error message when you try to install Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1

Further reading

TechNet Forums – Exchange 2007 sp1 setup fails with code 8202
Force Replication Between Domain Controllers

Acknowledgements

This topic was brought to my attention by Johan Veldhuis, an Exchange Server MVP.