You wouldn’t think that Microsoft could make like that awkward for their own tools. So you’d think that putting the management tools for Exchange 2007 Sp2 onto a Windows 7 32 bit machine would be easy or at least not a crazy setup ? Wrong. Microsoft manage to say that its possible and not possible at the same time. It is possible and heres how.
Download the Exchange release (sp1/2/3) for the exchange server you need to manage. Unpack it and set the compatibilty settings for the setup.exe to Vista Sp1. Then run the setup (run as administrator) not just logged in as admistrator – pick a custom install and then select only the management tools. If there are dependencies (IIS may require you to activate some features – and it will tell you what). Fix those dependencies – reboot after that and retry the setup – again runas administrator and with vista sp1 compatibilty.
You should be rewarded with Windows 7 running the exchange management tools . More about these in another blog.