Troubleshooting Exchange 2010 Management Tools startup issues

In this blog post, we will be highlighting some of the most common errors that may be seen when attempting to open the Exchange Management tools (Exchange Management Console and Exchange Management Shell).

To start off, you first need to be aware that in Exchange 2010, all management is done via Remote PowerShell, even when opening the Management Tools on an Exchange server. Where this differs from Exchange 2007 is that there is now a much larger dependency on IIS, as Remote PowerShell requests are sent via the HTTP protocol and use IIS as the mechanism for connections. IIS works with the WinRM (Windows Remote Management) service, and the WSMan (Web Services for Management) protocol to initiate the connection.

When you click on the Exchange Management Shell shortcut, a Remote PowerShell session is opened. Instead of simply loading the Exchange snap-in (as we did with Exchange 2007), PowerShell connects using IIS to the closest Exchange 2010 server via WinRM. WinRM then performs authentication checks, creates the remote session and presents to you the cmdlets that you have access to via RBAC (Role Based Access Control).

Since all Remote PowerShell connections go through IIS, we have identified some of the most common errors that may be exhibited when attempting to open the Exchange Management tools along with the most common causes of those errors and how to address these issues. We have attempted to list these in order of frequency.

--> the rest is on Exchange's Team blog :

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/02/04/453946.aspx