DC in Parent Domain Died, GC in Child Domain lives.

[Randy Stachelrodt]

OK, I'm stuck.
My Parent domain's only Domain Controller died, requiring
hardware replacement and a reload of the Win2kAS. The
backups are useless.
One of my child domains has a copy of the global catalog.
Is there a way to restore AD to the parent domain and all
7 child domains?
And, yes, I was able to convince the management to get
another machine to be a second DC in the parent domain,
and I'm fixing the backup problem. This all helps for
next time, but doesn't help me now.

 

[Matjaz Ladava [MVP]]

If you lost your parent domain DC (which was probably your root domain), you
just lost your forest. There is no way to recover, if you don't have a valid
backup or second DC in the root domain to replicate AD from. Root domain has
some special accounts that are not in child domains (EA and SA). Needles to
say, that having two DC's in each domain should be necessity especially if
this is your root domain.

--
Regards

Matjaz Ladava, MCSE, MCSA, MVP
Microsoft MVP - Active Directory
(e-mail address removed), (e-mail address removed)
http://ladava.com