John,
Your are correct in that the only way to change your domain name is to
demote all DCs down and basically rebuild the domain. This can be done
without rebuilding the OS. But you will have to recreate all users,
groups, reACL all resources and rejoin all clients back to the domain.
How many W2K DCs do you have within your domain? I'm assuming you are
running dcpromo with the "this is the last domain controller in the
domain" checkbox enabled on your W2K DC. If you have more then one you
must demote them all without that checkbox until you have one left in which
you will check the box during the demotion.
If you only have one, you may have had an additional DC in the domain at
one point but it was not gracefully demoted out (for instance, forcefully
recreated). If so you may want to go through KB 216498:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=216498 to perform a metadata cleanup.
blim
--------------------
| >From: "JohnNews" <
[email protected]>
| >Subject: Deleting AD & DNS
| >Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 02:51:04 -0500
| >Lines: 17
| >X-Priority: 3
| >X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
| >X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158
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| >Message-ID: <e#
[email protected]>
| >Newsgroups: microsoft.public.win2000.active_directory
| >NNTP-Posting-Host: c-24-2-198-124.client.comcast.net 24.2.198.124
| >Path: cpmsftngxa06.phx.gbl!TK2MSFTNGP08.phx.gbl!TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl
| >Xref: cpmsftngxa06.phx.gbl
microsoft.public.win2000.active_directory:56577
| >X-Tomcat-NG: microsoft.public.win2000.active_directory
| >
| >Folks:
| >
| >I have 2 AD win 2000 Servers on my small home network. I want to change
my
| >DNS/AD domain name. When I run DCPROMO I keep getting the following
error
| >message:
| >
| >"The operation failed because this server is not the last DC in the
domain.
| >The server is unwilling to process the request"
| >
| >Is there a way to remove AD & DNS without having to reinstall the entire
| >Operating System ?
| >
| >
| >Thanks,
| >John.
| >
| >
| >
