Today whilst busy updating one of my other sites I encountered the following error:

Some controls aren’t valid. Setup previously failed while performing the action “Install”. You can’t resume setup by performaing the action “BuildToBuildUpgrade”.

For some reason Exchange thinks it did not install correctly when the previous installation was done. To fix this you need to edit the Registry, please take note doing so you do at your own risk. Make a backup of your Registry before commencing with the mods.

Open regedit (Start -> run), navigate to the following key:
-> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftExchangeServerv14

Under each role, Mailbox, Hub Transport, Client Access, have a look for an action and watermark entry, delete these 2 keys and then reboot your Exchange Server. You can now run the installation again of your Service Pack.

Hope it helps.

By edward

16 thought on “Exchange 2010 SP3 Upgrade Error”
  1. Thank you! This happened to two brand new Exchange 2010 SP1 Mailbox servers. I followed the instructions and everything upgraded properly.

  2. For me it was only on the unified messaging role the other roles did not have those entries. but it worked perfectly after I deleted them. thanks

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