How to manually demote a Domain controller??

[Belgarath]

Hi All,

I have a (big) problem.
I have promoted a windows 2000 server to domain-controller, but during the
promoting a problem occured and now the server is neither a DC nor a
Win2000-server.
I can not use dcpromo to demote the server. It keeps asking me an account
with enterprise administrator privileges to the forest, "", but since the
domain-server is corrupted it can not find the domain.

Now I would like to demote my Domain server and I found some documents on
the web (microsoft KB and stuff) but they don't do the trick. For example:
when I try to remove a domain server using ntdsutil I get a not allowed
error.

I have tried this before on the same server and then I was always able to
demote the server using dcpromo. Last time I did this I had to manually
start the "Net Logon" service to be able to supply the local administrator
password, but I can not start Net Logon now. Is stops with the message:

C:\>net start netlogon
System error 1075 has occurred.
The dependency service does not exist or has been marked for deletion.

Is there a way to just remove all of the ADS stuff? I don't need to
recover, I just want to get rid of the stuff.

The problem is probably caused by the two networkcards I have installed in
the server. The first network connection in the list of "Network and
Dail-up Connections" is disabled, but the ADS seems to be set on using thE
network-connection in the list.

Any help is appreciated.

Regards,

Roel

 

[J.C. Hornbeck [MSFT]]

Take a look at this article. It should tell you how to forcefully remove
the server and do a metadata cleanup:

332199 - Using the DCPROMO /FORCEREMOVAL Command to Force the Demotion of
Active Directory Domain Controllers
(http://support.microsoft.com/?id=332199).

--
J.C. Hornbeck, MCSE
Microsoft Product Support

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[Belgarath]

Take a look at this article. It should tell you how to forcefully remove
the server and do a metadata cleanup:

332199 - Using the DCPROMO /FORCEREMOVAL Command to Force the Demotion of
Active Directory Domain Controllers
(http://support.microsoft.com/?id=332199).

Thanks a lot, that did the trick. And I thought I had been through all the
KB articles on the MS-site. I tried al kinds of keywords but this page
didn't show up.

Thanks,

Roel