Problems with DC and FDC replication (Win2k)

[BrendanM]

Hello:

I'm currently to the point where I'm pouding my head on a wall. I've got a
DC that won't (can't) replicate to the FDC on a Windows 2000 Domain.

I have a W2k forest that was running one DC -- the FDC -- for quite a long
time. A few months ago, I decided to promote another server to act as a
backup incase of hardware failure.

It was a serendipitous move, because later that week, two hard drives failed
in the FDC, bringing it down. I was able to get the two drives replaced and
I managed to restore the FDC from a backup tape. Unfortunately, this backup
had been performed just prior to my promoting the other server, so the AD
now has no idea that the other DC exists.

Now I have clients running into problems because the replication is not
happening as it should and I'd like to fix the issue without formatting the
backup DC.

Here is what I'm getting in my event log:

Event ID 1586

The checkpoint with the PDC was unsuccessful. The checkpointing process will
be retried again in four hours. A full synchronization of the security
database to downlevel domain controllers may take place if this machine is
promoted to be the PDC before the next successful checkpoint. The error
returned was: The naming context is in the process of being removed or is
not replicated from the specified server.

~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~

When I try to remove the DC from the Domain via DCPROMO, I get the following
message:

Active Directory Installation Failed

The operation failed because:

The Directory Service failed to replicate off changes made locally.

"The DSA object could not be found."

~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~

After digging around on the Microsoft Support Site and in Google's archives
of this newsgroup I found several different documents dealing with NTDSUTIL.
The procedures were all basically the same, and after following them, I got
the following error:

error 0x2094 (The DSA object cannot be deleted)

~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~

This DC had no special FSMO duties, and according to both of the DCs, the
original (FDC) is the Master for everything.


Does anyone have any ideas or resources that would be of assistance in this
instance?

Any help would be appreciated.

-Brendan

Brendan Meteer
System Administrator
Transworld Network Corp

 

[Paul Bergson]

Well you have two dc's each with its own version of your forest. What you
should have done was cleanup the metadata and repromoted the lost dc. You
can't bring both servers back one is going to have to be demoted and
removed.

I would remove the second dc, in order to remove that you will need to do a
dcpromo /forceremoval. Since there is no info in AD about this second dc
you should be able to then repromote this back up.

If this happens again you need to use the second dc to replicate the AD
information back to the first, but you will first need to clean up the AD
info. Just post back here if you run into something like this again.

--


Paul Bergson MCT, MCSE, MCSA, CNE, CNA, CCA
http://www.pbbergs.com/

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[BrendanM]

Okay, thanks!

-Brendan

Well you have two dc's each with its own version of your forest. What you
should have done was cleanup the metadata and repromoted the lost dc. You
can't bring both servers back one is going to have to be demoted and
removed.

I would remove the second dc, in order to remove that you will need to do
a dcpromo /forceremoval. Since there is no info in AD about this second
dc you should be able to then repromote this back up.

If this happens again you need to use the second dc to replicate the AD
information back to the first, but you will first need to clean up the AD
info. Just post back here if you run into something like this again.

--


Paul Bergson MCT, MCSE, MCSA, CNE, CNA, CCA
http://www.pbbergs.com/

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.