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I recently rebuilt my Windows XP Professional Edition laptop, and I wanted to use the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in to manage my system's Exchange 2000 Server user properties. I finally found a solution with the Windows .NET Server (Win.NET Server) 2003 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) Administration Tools Pack and the Exchange 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) Active Directory Connector (ADC) Management Tool. These two tools installed the necessary components to let me use the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in to view Exchange user properties. Be aware that the Administration Tools Pack is beta software. Also, because Microsoft doesn't yet support the Exchange System Manager (ESM) on XP, I still couldn't run the ESM to manage my Exchange server. However, the Exchange 2000 SP3 ADC Management Tool prevented me from having to run a Windows 2000 Server Terminal Services client every time I want to look up a user's Exchange properties or change a user's mailbox setting.
To use the Exchange 2000 SP3 ADC Management Tool, you need to be running XP Pro with SP1 installed. Install the Administration Tools Pack (available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?releaseid=34032 &area=search&ordinal=nan), which will let you use the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in to manage your Win2K Server Active Directory (AD). (My server has Exchange 2000 SP3 and Win2K SP3 installed.) For more information about the Administration Tools Pack, see the Microsoft article "Administering Windows 2000-Based and Windows .NET Server-Based Computers Using Windows XP Professional-Based Clients" (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=304718). Next, install the ADC from the Exchange 2000 SP3 CD-ROM (or from an expanded Web download). Select the Management Tools option during setup. You can now use the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in to manage Exchange 2000 user settings.
