Hi Everyone...
I have purchased my first BB, the 8830. I am an IT consultant for small business and I have spent alot of time with my clients and there handhelds. I did jump into my own smartphone, a windows device and I should have know better. Verizon was kind enough to let me return and get something that I would like. So I am a BB fan now...i really really really dig this device.
Onto the technical question.
I need to get email, calendar, contacts. I am aware of the express/professional BES. I downloaded it and installed it.
My enviroment.
One server, windows 2003, its a DC with Exchange 2003 and I threw the express install on the server.
I basically followed the bouncing ball during the install, I had a glitch with sql, but seemed to get past it. Finally, it appears everything is installed. I created myself as a user and was able to send myself an activation email.
I went into the enterprise activation on the phone, enterned my email address and the password that I recieved in the email. The phone just hangs at "activating" then times out saying it cannot contact the server.

Everything appears to be installed correctly, but I am willing to make some changes to the location of software installs if I should not be running this on the exchange box. I do have Outlook installed on this server which I seen some BB whitepaper regarding not doing that?
Is this a firewall port issue? I also forwarded port 3101 from the outside world to the BB server.
An additional question. When it comes to searching out problems with Express, does the regular BB Enterprise tech doc's apply?
Thanks for reading and thanks for any help.
Rod

Never install BES on your Exchange sever unless it's the BES Professional. Outlook on your Exchange server is also a BIG NO.

Put up another server to install the BES software on and use that.

Also, I would not uninstall Outlook just yet. Doing so may remove the MAPI Subsystem from your Exchange server and pretty much ruin it.

Outlook uses a client version of MAPI, 1.0.xxxx, and full Exchange uses 6.5.7638.1. Right now after installing Outlook you have now made the Exchange server use a client version of MAPI which does handle server side requests.

I am not sure if there is a fix other than reinstalling Exchange but I would possibly contact Microsoft if you can't find any other way around it.

If you're Exchange server is that important you could always export your mailbox to a PST, reinstall the Exchange and import the data from the PST back into your new mailbox.

Also, what account did you use to install the BES? Did you create the BESAdmin account?

If not then follow this article to do a switch service account:

BlackBerry Search Results

The BES needs to be installed and used by an account with a specific set of rights/permissions. Even though a domain admin sounds like it will work, it won't. That account will cause calendar issues and also a possible sending issue after certain updates are applied to the Exchange server.

Follow the above article the BESAdmin account but I would look into moving the BES to a new server. Seeing as nothing is working as of yet I would start fresh, new database and all.

Rod - Welcome to the forums!!!

Well that puts you about 10 steps ahead of most people in this situation ... you have some flexibility which is good to hear.

Indeed, Outlook should not be installed on any Exchange servers prior to Exchange 2007. Go through Add/Remove programs and uninstall it. Before you do that however, stop and set all "Microsoft Exchange" services to manual, and download Exchange 2003 SP2. With the Exchange services stopped uninstall Outlook and restart the server. After the restart completes apply Exchange 2003 SP2 to the server, and then visit Microsoft Update and install the applicable Exchange 2003 patches. Reset the startup type of the Exchange services and bounce the box again. After it comes up check re-create the MAPI profile on the BES.

Most likely not.

Please remove this forward; it isn't required.

In general yes, but not everything. If you're not sure about a specific doc, ask here and I'm sure we'll steer you in the right direction.

This is one of my favorite KB articles for troubleshooting ... our helpdesk has every activation error memorized and over half of the support calls we take get resolved from this one doc - Identifying and troubleshooting enterprise activation issues

Best of luck!