Exchange 2007 SP1 Upgrade Failed - Weird Problem while upgrading Exchange 2007 RTM to SP1

Hello all, while I was preparing my Virtual Machine which is running single Windows 2003 SP2 as DC and running Exchange 2007 RTM Version (HUB, CAS, and MBX) for my next article to post, I faced a weird problem which misses up the whole virtual machine, for no valid reason. Here is the problem that I faced:

I was updating this virtual machine to Exchange Server 2007 SP1, and while the upgrade was in the process, suddenly the whole machine got frozen, and it stayed like that for almost 30 minutes, I could not access it, where I had to force the shutdown of this machine. Now, when this machine restarted I logged on and found so many errors in the event viewer related for Exchange. Here is the Weird thing, I couldn’t find the Exchage 2007 folders under the program list, where did they go??????

So, I tried to run the SP1 upgrade setup again, using the GUI, but this is what I received:

“The Exchange Files are not installed, but the backup settings registry key is present. Only build to Build upgrade mode is available”

When I checked the services to see if any of the services are not working, I saw that all Exchange 2007 Services (around 13 Services) with IIS and others were disabled. Actually these services were disabled by the upgrade process, and suppose to be restarted again after the upgrade process finished successfully but since the installation failed in the middle of the way, all these services remains disabled.
Now, how to solve this problem?
Since the GUI could not solve my problem, I tried this time the Shell command, so I ran this command:

Setup.com /Mode:Upgrade

And also, it failed, but this time, the error is manageable somehow, this is the output I got:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unattended Setup

Preparing Exchange Setup

The following server roles will be upgraded

Hub Transport Role

Client Access Role

Mailbox Role

Performing Microsoft Exchange Server Prerequisite Check

Hub Transport Role Checks ......................... FAILED

Setup cannot continue with upgrade because 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\bin\ExchHelp.chm' is open. Close the file and restart setup.

Client Access Role Checks ......................... FAILED

Unable to read data from the Metabase. Ensure that Microsoft Internet Information Services is installed.

The World Wide Web (W3SVC) service is either disabled or not installed on this computer. You must exit Setup, install the required component, then restart the Setup process.

Setup cannot continue with upgrade because 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\bin\ExchHelp.chm' is open. Close the file and restart setup.

Mailbox Role Checks ......................... FAILED

Unable to read data from the Metabase. Ensure that Microsoft Internet Information Services is installed.

The World Wide Web (W3SVC) service is either disabled or not installed on this computer. You must exit Setup, install the required component, then restart the Setup process.

Setup cannot continue with upgrade because 'C:\ProgramFiles\Microsoft\Exchange Server\bin\ExchHelp.chm' is open. Close the file and restart setup.

The Exchange Server setup operation did not complete.Visit http://support.microsoft.com and enter the Error ID to find moreinformation.

Exchange Server setup encountered an error.
-----------------------------------------------------------

So, as you can see from the output of the upgrade command, the ExchHelp.chm file is missing and can’t be located under the Bin Directory of Exchange server 2007 in the path that was mentioned in the error output. Also the setup process can’t access IIS Metabase , off course because the IIS and other related services were disabled.

So, here are the steps I took to solve this problem:

• Locate the ExchHelp.chm file from Exchange 2007 SP1 setup directory (located under “Media Drive:\Setup\ServerRoles\Common”) and copy it back under Exchange Binaries directory (BIN) located under my server ('C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\bin’).
  
  
• Set the following services back to Automatic and started them:
  
  o IIS Admin Service
  o HTTP SSL Service
  o World Wide Web Publishing Service.
  
  
• Rerun the upgrade again:
  
  Setup.com /Mode:Upgrade

And here we go, the setup completed SUCCESSFULLY :) and now I am happy, I restarted the server and testing the health of my server , everything is back to normal now, with an updated server to SP1 :)

Now, I can start preparing for my second article, Actually I stopped the article till I figure out why this problem happened, and thanks god I solved it :) now I am happy.

Stay tuned for my next article from my working virtual machine :)