because of a dumb mistake I can no longer manage the Exchange 2013 server in our test lab and I need to uninstall and reinstall. When I try I get an error: Error:Uninstall can't continue. Database Mailbox Database 0430300065 : This mailbox database contains one or more mailboxes, mailbox plans, archive mailboxes, public folder mailboxes or arbitration mailboxes. <blah, blah, blah>
I tried using the powershell command (as suggested in this long list of instructions under that error) Get-Mailbox -database 0430300065. When I run it I get an error "Unable to find database "0430300065". I can't understand how it can find it to post the error but not when I run the very cmdlet the error instructions suggest I do. <this is frustrating!>
The test installation (my second so far with Exchange 2013 on this lab setup) has been quite frustrating to say the least. This is perhaps the most irritating version of Exchange I have had to deal with. Anyway, rants aside, i want to completely uninstall Exchange 2013 (i don't care about any existing mailboxes, etc...it's just a test environment) and attempt a 3rd installation to see if I can get that to work (previously we a running Exchange 2013 server but we couldn't send externally from the two test mailboxes we created and we couldn't send INTERNALLY either! Connectors for send and receive were setup and the Windows (2012 R2) firewall was off. No other firewalls were on. We were able to ping DNS and IP's anywhere on the LAN. DNS is setup correctly to resolve internal and external names.
So...how can I blow away this installation of Exchange 2013 and re-install???