XADM: How to Recover from a Lost Key Management Server (152849)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0
  • Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0
This article was previously published under Q152849

SUMMARY

If the disk that a Key Management (KM) Server password is located on is lost or damaged, and the password on the disk is unknown, the following procedure can be used to reset the KM Server password.

MORE INFORMATION

  1. Have the users decrypt any encrypted messages (or else they will not be able to read them once they get a new security key). They can do this manually or use the bulk security tool SECTOOL.EXE (included with the Microsoft Exchange Resource Kit) to decrypt them all at once.
  2. Run KMSERVER -u (you must use lowercase) to remove the Microsoft Exchange Key Management Service.
  3. Remove the directory where the Key Management server was installed.
  4. Reinstall the KM Server software to generate a new key for encrypted messages.
Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:4/28/2005
Keywords:kbenv kbhowto KB152849
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