<primal_scream>WHY DO THESE THINGS HAPPEN?!?!</primal_scream>

I've been fighting with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 all morning.  This week I have tasked myself with moving our Exchange to a new server.  I moved the mailboxes earlier this week, and everything has been working just fine.  This morning, I decided to cut loose the old server.  Let me give you a piece of advice.

NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, EVEN THINK ABOUT DELETING A SERVER USING THE EXCHANGE SYSTEM MANAGER.

It's my fault, I know.  My inner system admin instincts fired at the last second, "Don't do it, boy! I'll get the blame for it!"*  But, it was too late.  The damage was done.  Now my Active Directory is in some kind of limbo where it thinks the old server is still an Exchange server and everyone's Outlook is failing to connect – despite the fact that everyone's mailboxes are on the new server!

One of the problems, I've discovered, is that the new server needed to be configured as the Master under the Routing Group Members.  However, the Information Store and related services are failing to start when the server reboots.  I was successful in starting the services manually, so our e-mail is currently back up.  I'm not confident that the services will automatically restart the next time we need to reboot the server...

From what I've read, what I did actually solves problems in some cases.  My decision wasn't entirely wrong.  Cie la vie, I suppose...

For future reference, the proper way of removing an Exchange 2003 server from your domain is to uninstall Exchange.  DUH.

* Foghorn Leghorn