Just some stuff that I should mention I have tried.I have tried reinstalling exchange over the top and service packs, no go. I have tried rebuilding the IIS metabase as I have seen that fix wierd issues in ESM before. I have checked the records in AD via adsiedit as per kb933781.I have rebooted server, and applied all available updates.

Don't know where else to ask this.I have an interesting issue on a clients server, everything works ok. But In the ESM under the servers protocols in the SMTP container the default server is missing, there are no connectors either. I have tried creating a connector to no avail. I can't create a new SMTP VS, but I can smtp to the server and send ...

but how-come a ping 10.010.20.1 pings 10.10.20.1I was always taught leading zeros where ignored in ip?

C:\>ping 10.10.020.001Pinging 10.10.16.1 with 32 bytes of data:Isn't 10.10.020.001 the same as 10.10.20.1? So why does it change it to 10.10.16.1?

I haven't done it, always considered open LDAP not a bad replacement to AD. But you could in theory setup your win2k3 server as BDC in your ldap domain, replicate across the directory and info, make sure it is all correct then remove the Open LDAP from the network and promote your 2k3 server to the PDC. Maybe test this in a lab enviroment first, ...