Merging two trees into a forest

[Guest]

Good morning,

I recently upgraded teo NT4 domains to Windows 2003 AD. When I did this, I
made each domain a seperate, unrelated tree and then established trusts
between the two domains to allow users in Domain A to be authenticated into
Doman B and make use of the resources in Domain B. Despite the fact that
authentication between the domains is clearly taking place, it appears that
the two domains are otherrwise unaware of each other. For instance, even
though I am able to map to network shares on server located in B using my
USERID which is homed in A, when I try to log onto my workstation which is
homed in B using the same USERID, it tells me that I can not be logged
because Domain A is not available. I am thinking, at this point, that the
mistake that I made was in not making Domain B a child directory of Domain A
and establishing an AD forest rather than two seperate trees. Is there anyway
to now migrate the two domains together into one forest with Domain A as the
top level domain? running dcpromo and wiping out Domain B is not an option.

TIA

 

[Dave Shaw [MVP]]

The short answer is no. There is no way to *merge* one forest into another.

However, are you still in mixed mode, or have you made the switch to Native
or beyond? If so, you could just back down one of the domains to a Windows
NT domain and then migrate it into the other forest. If you are beyond
Native mode - you will probably have to migrate the accounts into one or
another forest.

-ds

 

[Guest]

Good evening,

I appreciate your response. I had pretty much come to that conclusion.

Would you happen to know if there's a KB article or white paper on how to
back out an Active directory that's still in mixed mode?

Thanks again