for you microsoft gurus..

Weve recently migrated... well more upgraded a domain.. (win2kserver ---> to 2 new 2k3 servers)

now something is amiss here.. we have managed to get the new "primary" server to take over all the operations master roles for the domain.. and the old machine has been shut down.

but the secondary/backup machine is not on the domain properly, and comes up with errors when trying to get domain settings, and has "error" for trying to see what the operations masters are.. concequently, i cant use DCpromo to remove the machine from the domain to try to re add it as it says it cant find a pdc.

so.. i think i need to remove the second server and re-add it to get it to work.

also how can i remove the old server from the AD list, as it keeps trying to replicate to it.

cheers

Colin, have you tried going into "active directory users and computers" to see whats listed under computers.

It shows under the domain controllers on the users and computers. but theres error messages about being unable to replicate properly. and it complains about not being able to contact the operations master.

sounds to me like its still looking for the old 2000 server, my ad skills are not upto suggesting a way to resolve the problem though.

Use the procedure here http://www.petri.co.il/delete_failed_dcs_from_ad.htm to remove the "failed" domain controller from active directory.

Then do some diagnosis to make sure everything is working well on your domain (DCDIAG is a good place to start) to see if you can find out why adding the second DC failed.

As for how to reset your second server back to being just a member server - will it let you run DCPROMO with it disconnected from the network?

Well...

It seems to have umm sorted itself out :confused:

the 2 new servers are now replicating with each other.. and are both reporting as being healthy using dcdiag. (apart from contacting old server, which is switched off, will prob demote it next week)

ive cleared the event logs to see what pops up in the next few days..

one thing that i have noticed, is on the xp workstations ive had a few errors about not being able to read the gp objects... and authentication because the time is skewed?