Reinstate Crashed Windows 2003 PDC

[Zedd]

Hi All,

A couple of weeks ago our PDC crashed and the BDC (Also windows 2003)
took over. We activated the DHCP server on de BDC and we where on-line
since then.

The PDC now is fixed and has a new system board. Since the PDC crash
there where a number of deleted/added users in the A/D.

What would be best practice to get the original PDC back on-line with
the current A/D state?

Thanks for all the answers in advanced.

greets,
Zedd

 

[Jorge_de_Almeida_Pinto]

Hi All,

A couple of weeks ago our PDC crashed and the BDC (Also
windows 2003)
took over. We activated the DHCP server on de BDC and we where
on-line
since then.

The PDC now is fixed and has a new system board. Since the PDC
crash
there where a number of deleted/added users in the A/D.

What would be best practice to get the original PDC back
on-line with
the current A/D state?

Thanks for all the answers in advanced.

greets,
Zedd

Well you have several options...

* If you PDC was running OK before the crash and when it crashed you
only replaced the system board and the PDC has not been offline for
more than the tombstone lifetime (default = 60 days)... just turn it
on!

* if it the AD installation on the PDC is corrupt and is bad but the
server is still bootable, boot it into Directory services restore mode
and do a non-authoritative restore of the system disk and the system
state and after that reboot the server ONLY if you have a valid backup
for the PDC that is not older than the tombstone lifetime(default = 60
days)!

* If you have no backup, the system wil not boot or whatever. do a
metadata cleanup of the PDC on the BDC
(http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=216498 or/and
http://www.petri.co.il/fix_unsuccessful_demotion.htm) and reinstall
the PDC from scratch

As I can see right now and if you do not have anything that is worth
restoring on the PDC do option 3 (metadata cleanup and rebuilding)

by the way there are no more PDCs and BDCs in AD. All DCs are equal
besides the fact that some may have additional roles like the GC or
the FSMOs.

 

[Zedd]

Thanks for the provided options!
I'm not shure how long the machine has been off-line, but an employee
told me it shurely was less then 60 days.

So I turned on the machine and placed it back into the network.
Everyting seems to work fine, but is there an way to check out is the
replication is up and running again?

 

[Jorge_de_Almeida_Pinto]

Thanks for the provided options!
I'm not shure how long the machine has been off-line, but an
employee
told me it shurely was less then 60 days.

So I turned on the machine and placed it back into the
network.
Everyting seems to work fine, but is there an way to check out
is the
replication is up and running again?

Check the event logs for errors and you could use REPLMON and/or
REPADMIN to check replication