Installing GFI MailEssentials on the Exchange 2000/2003 machine

Windows 2000/2003 Server or Advanced Server

Microsoft Exchange server 2000/2003

If using the GFI MailEssentials reporter, Microsoft XML core services is required. This is included in the GFI MailEssentials installation and will be installed automatically if your operating system is UK/US English.

IMPORTANT: Disable Anti Virus software from scanning the GFI MailEssentials & IIS directories! AV products are known to both interfere with normal operation as well as slow down any software which requires file access. In fact Microsoft does not recommend running file based anti virus software on the Exchange Server. For more information: http://kbase.gfi.com/showarticle.asp?id=KBID001522

Make sure that backup software is not backing up any of the GFI MailEssentials directories at any point.

GFI MailEssentials will need to start & stop the Exchange services during installation.

Running GFI MailEssentials set-up

1. On the Exchange machine, Log-on as administrator and run GFI MailEssentials set-up by double-clicking the file me.exe. A welcome dialog will appear. Close other Windows programs and click Next. GFI MailEssentials will prompt you to check for a later GFI MailEssentials version. Always use the latest version!

3. Set-up will now ask you where you want GFI MailEssentials to be installed. GFI MailEssentials will need approximately 30 MB of free hard disk space. In addition to this, you must reserve approximately 200 MB for temporary files.

4. Now enter your Name, company, and License key. If you are evaluating the product, leave the default `Evaluation'. Click Next.

5. Set-up will ask you for the administrator e-mail. This e-mail will be used to send critical notifications.

6. If you are installing GFI MailEssentials on an Exchange server configured as a front end server (i.e. in a DMZ in front of another Exchange Server), you can choose whether you want to install GFI MailEssentials in Active Directory mode or in SMTP mode. Active Directory mode allows you to select users present in Active Directory for user based configuration/rules, such as a disclaimer. However, on a front end server not all users are available. In this case its better to select SMTP mode, which allows you to input the SMTP email address for user based configuration/rules.

7. Set-up will now confirm the local domains that you have configured. It retrieves the local domains from your IIS set-up. Its important to ensure that your local domains are listed correctly. MailEssentials will ONLY filter mail destined for your local domain - therefore if you do not configure your local domain correctly no spam will be deleted!

8. Set-up will now copy all program files to the selected destination, and finish the installation by creating a GFI MailEssentials program group. Click Finish to finish setup. After setup has copied all the files, it will ask if it can restart the SMTP service.

9. After installation set-up will check if you have the Microsoft XML engine installed. If you don't, and you are running a US/UK version of Microsoft Windows it will install it for you. If you are NOT running a UK/US version of windows, set-up will prompt you to download and install the appropriate Microsoft XML engine. The XML engine is used by the reporter application and is only 2 megabytes. It is most likely to be used by other applications too. For more information check

Installing GFI MailEssentials on the Exchange 2000/2003 machine

System requirements

Running GFI MailEssentials set-up