Lync 2010 Publish Topology Crash

Last week I installed Lync 2010 and made it all the way to the end where you are supposed to publish the topology. Unfortunately, I didn't think to install the databases to a new instance and overwrote my existing Live Communication Server databases. Needless to say, LCS didn't like that very much.

After spending a few minutes restoring the old databases and bringing LCS back up, I tried to add the new instance to my topology and publish. The moment I clicked publish, I received a "target invocation exception" error and the MMC crashed. Oops.

After reinstalling Lync several times - even creating a new one (thank you virtual machines!), I figured out that the Lync configuration couldn't possibly be stored on the server itself. Turns out it's stored in Active Directory:

Default naming context > DC=YourDomain > CN=System, CN=Microsoft, CN=RTC Service, CN=Topology Settings

Delete the string in there CN=random GUID.

Voila, you can now publish your topology.

But wait! There's more. You will need to install the database again (even after publishing). Right click on your Site and go to topology > Install Database.

Hope that helps, there isn't a hole lot of documentation out there yet.