Getting the 'Change Password' feature to work in a co-existence scenario

If you are running Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 in co-existence and you have users on both systems, you will notice that, while Exchange 2007′s new OWA interface has a brand new Change Password option, the Change Password functionality for the users on Exchange 2003 has stopped working and you receive a 404 – File Not Found error.

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This is because the IISADMPWD virtual directory, which was previously available on your Exchange 2003 Front-End server is no longer present on your Client Access Server. So here’s the solution:

1. If you are running Exchange Server 2007 on Windows Server 2003:

Simply enable the IISADMPWD virtual directory by following this article.

2. If you are running Exchange Server 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008

Things can get a little tricky here. Especially when you’ve noticed that there is no IISADMPWD folder inside the \Windows\System32\Inetsrv folder! Now what are we gonna do?! Here’s something that I’ve tried and it works:

a. Simply copy the \Windows\System32\InetSrv\IISADMPWD folder from your Exchange 2003 Front End server and copy it to \Windows\System32\InetSrv\ folder on your Windows 2008 Exchange Client Access Server.

b. Open IIS Manager. Right click on Default Web site and choose Add Virtual Directory. Specify the alias as IISADMPWD and browse to the path of the \Windows\System32\InetSrv\IISADMPWD folder.

c. Right click on the IISADMPWD virtual directory, and select the option Convert to Application.

d. Click on IISADMPWD application to select it. On the right pane, open the Authentication icon. Disable Anonymous authentication and enable Basic Authentication. Make sure only Basic Authentication is enabled.

e. Restart IIS service by using the command iisreset /noforce

Your Exchange 2003 users should now be able to change their passwords.

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Shijaz Abdulla is a Partner Technology Advisor at Microsoft, helping their top tier partners build on their Microsoft practice. He is also a trusted advisor to medium enterprise customers in Qatar. He is a blogger, tech enthusiast, and a Microsoft evangelist.

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One comment on "Getting the 'Change Password' feature to work in a co-existence scenario"

  1. Anonymous says:
    February 20, 2009 um 12:37 am

    hi,
    one quick question i have done the configuration with iis 7.0 and windows 2008 with exchange 2007 CAS role only, but when i access from my owa 2007 my mailbox in exchange 2003 and try to change the password, it says “Either the password is too short or password uniqueness restrictions have not been met”, i don´t know why because in accesing from my owa 2003 FE it work without problema. Any ideas??

    Thanks in advance,
    Luis

    Reply

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