Error code is 1603. The File Cannot Be Found In Cabinet File ‘ATLplcy.cab’ – Exchange 2007 Setup Error

I came across this error message below while installing Exchange 2007 SP3 (vanilla install) on a Windows 2008 R2 SP1 server.

Installing product C:\Binary\exchangeserver.msi failed.
Fatal error during installation. Error code is 1603. Last error reported by the MSI package is ‘The file ‘ul_catalog.51B6FD4C_6551_1104_FF1F_C8B3B9A1E18E’ cannot be installed because the file cannot be found in cabinet file ‘ATLplcy.cab’. This could indicate a network error, an error reading from the CD-ROM, or a problem with this package.’

The Exchange Server Setup operation did not complete.

Exchange 2007 with SP3 is supported on a 2008 R2 SP1 machine and it is a brand new install. I downloaded the ISO again & tried – same error. Extracted to local disk & tried – same error.

The issue was that I had placed Update Rollup 10 in the “Updates” folder.

The readme file in the Updates folder only says the following, which was fine in my case.

For a new installation only, updates that are put into this folder are installed during setup. Updates should not be put into this folder during an upgrade to Exchange 2007 SP3.

Even though this was a brand new vanilla install of Exchange 2007 SP3, the setup didn’t like it. After removing UR10 file from the Updates folder, the setup completed successfully.

The downside was I had to install UR10 manually after the server reboot. Not bad since I had only one server to deploy ;)