The Schema Preparation option is not available in the Office Live Communications Server 2005 Deployment Tool (898151)

SYMPTOMS

When you try to deploy Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 in your Active Directory domain, you experience one or both the following symptoms:

When you click the link that corresponds to the server role that you want to deploy, the Prep Schema option is not available in the Live Communications Server Deployment Tool.
You receive the following error message:
Action failed with error code 0x8007054B

The domain could not be contacted.

In this situation, you cannot deploy Live Communications Server 2005 in the domain.

CAUSE

This issue occurs if one or both the following operations master roles are not available when you try to deploy Live Communications Server 2005.

Note Operations master roles are also known as Flexible Single Master Operations (FSMO) roles.

PDC Emulator
Schema Master

Additionally, this issue occurs if a global catalog server is not available in the root domain of the Active Directory forest where you want to deploy Live Communications Server 2005.

The Live Communications Server 2005 Setup program and the Live Communications Server management program requires these operations master roles to be available. Additionally, these programs require a global catalog server to be available in the root domain.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, make sure that the domain controllers that hold the operations master roles that are mentioned in the "Cause" section are available on the network. Additionally, make sure that a global catalog server is available in the root domain of the forest.

For more information about how to transfer operations master roles to other domain controllers, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

324801 How to view and transfer FSMO roles in Windows Server 2003

For more information about how to determine whether a domain controller is a global catalog server or about how to designate a domain controller as a global catalog server, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/8fcb40ad-8aee-48e6-9924-2b8f0d2a01b31033.mspx

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about how to deploy Live Communications Server 2005, see the Live Communications Server Deployment Resources. To do this, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011526591033.aspx