Exchange 2007 Uninstall hangs on Remove Exchange Files

Today I was decommissioning an Exchange 2007 server for a customer.  The uninstall process got down to “Remove Exchange Files” where it just hanged and did not proceed.  The environment was running Exchange 2007 SP2 on Windows Server 2008 Standard SP2.

After a quick search I found that I ran into a known uninstall issue. The hanging in removing the Exchange files is caused by a final Powershell script that won’t run so instead of ending in failure it just hangs and gives the appearance that it is still processing the removal.

All you need to do is open task manager and kill powershell.exe.  Doing this will automatically spawn a new Powershell and allow the removal to complete.  In my situation, the removal completed within 10 seconds of the new Powershell launching.