You can find a LOT of information in the Internet Connection Wizard log file (aka icwlog.txt), and that information can be really useful when trying to figure out why the Connect to the Internet Wizard is failing. I had a case the other day where the CEICW was failing on the network confirguration. The server had been in production for a while, and we had changed the IP address configuration on the external NIC, but when running the CEICW, it failed on the Network configuration.

Looking in the logs, we found the following error lines:

Error 0x8007042c returned from call to Installing RRAS (LAN)().
Error 0x8007042c returned from call to CNetCommit::Common().
Error 0x8007042c returned from call to CNetCommit::Commit().

Googling on this error returned no useful results.

We looked up the error in err.exe (part of the Exchange Admin Tools download) and got the following output:

ERROR_SERVICE_DEPENDENCY_FAIL winerror.h
# The dependency service or group failed to start.

At that point we did a service-by-service comparison on that box to a known good SBS server and found that the Telephony service had been disabled. Once we re-enabled the Telephony service, the CEICW completeld successfully.

Lessons learned from this experience:

• Not everything is in Google (yet)

• icwlog.txt is a good place to start when troubleshooing CEICW errors
• err.exe is a really useful tool for making some sense out of cryptic errors
• the Telephony service is used as part of the CEICW

I was working with a client to upgrade their Exchange 2003 from SP1 to SP2. The process is usually straightforward: you check and see if the Intelligent Message Filter (IMF) is installed and uninstall it if it is, then install Exchange SP2. It’s hard to forget about the first part, because the Exchange SP2 installer will fail to install if the IMF is still installed on the server.

But what if the Exchange SP2 installer tells you that IMF is still installed, even after you uninstall it from Add/Remove Programs? Or what if you don’t see the IMF listed in Add/Remove Programs to uninstall it?

Here are a few suggestions to get around this, followed by instructions for manually removing the IMF so Exchange SP2 can install.
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