Reformating a DC

[Citimouse]

Hi,

Our company has one domain controller, and that's the only one.

The DC has been giving numerous problems. It cannot update any security
hotfix after SP2. Therefore, I would like to reformat it.

Rather than keying in all the user ID after the reformat, can I just backup
the system state and restore it after I reformat it and promote it into a
DC?

Thanks.

 

[Paul McGuire]

First of all what brand/model is you server. We have a proliant ml350 and i
am unable to install anything about sp2. SP3 and 4 cause the server to hang
on reboot. I did the reinstall and before AD and everything i tried SP4 and
it did the same thing. I think it is the video driver or something. Any
way what i did was bring up a temp server and promoted as a additional DC
transfered all my roles and GC and then demoted the orginal server. This
was i did not risk losing my domain. Then formated reinstalled and tryed to
install SP then promote to DC. after all this is done and good you can
transfer roles back and make sure you have the orginal back as an GC and
then after replication and everything is working fine demote the temp
server. I use a PII 266 mhz laptop for my temp server. So about anything
will work. remember there are 5 fsmo roles and and the GC. There are KB
articles on how to transfer all roles in the GUI.

Let me know what kind of server you have and if you have any problems.

HTH

Paul McGuire

 

[Citimouse]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your reply.

I have a Dell PowerEdge 500sc and unfortunately, I do not have any other
server or laptop to spare. I guess I can only try my luck on this.

Wei Yu