FSMO roles

[Sasha]

Hello everyone
One friend asked me to help him in his company with AD problem. They have
two sites with two DC's in each site. In site #1 one DC couldn't boot and
they had some logon errors, drive mapping errors etc.
I tried to check that DC but it was in terrible condition, it couldn't even
boot correctly, if it succeeded after few shut downs you couldn't open any
snap-in (like Users and computers), replication didn't work etc..
I've checked all other DC's and they seemed quite OK so I decided to rebuild
this DC. I tried to transfer FSMO roles but I've got messages that DC with
roles is offline, you are guessing that it was the broken DC. Well I shut
down the DC, seized all 5 FSMO roles to DC in other site, checked AD and
everything seemed OK.
I installed Windows 2000 server SP4 on broken DC promoted it to DC,
replication was OK and my friend was extra happy.
But I noticed that in site #1 both DC's shoved OLD not existing DC as holder
of FSMO roles. Other two in site #2 shoved the correct one. I didn't notice
any error messages not even in event log. Double checked replication and it
worked correctly ( created two users and they were replicated). DNS had all
the records and there was no issue with resolving names.
Despite there is no problem (for now) I would like to correct this issue.
Did someone had this before? I think maybe I had to clean up AD from old DC
before I recreated it especially with same name (I couldn't change it,
political decision) but now is to late.

Thanks for any suggestion

Sasha

 

[Chris I]

There is a way to force the FSMO roles to the DC's you want. Get the book
Active Directory 2nd edition by O'Reilly. So far it has been very helpful
in understanding AD and ways to fix it.


Hope this helps.

 

[Sasha]

Hi Chris
Thanks for the tip. This time it was only replication latency, next morning
everithing was fine and it works perfectly.

Sasha