Unable to demote a Win2k DC

[Shaun Pillay]

Hi Everyone,

We currently have three Win2k DC's and one Win2k3 DC in our domain. The
Win2k3 DC is in the default first site and is not servicing any requests
because we are still testing it. Due to routine maintenance, I will have to
rebuild one of our Win2k DC's.

As a first step, I moved it to the default first site so that it does not
service any requests and left it there for a day or so. I then logged on to
it and ran the DCPROMO command to demote it before I rebuild it and the
DCPROMO failed with the following error message: The directory service was
unable to transfer the domain wide FSMO roles (PDC and RID master) to
another domain controller in this domain. A possible cause may be that no
other servers are online to receive the FSMO, or the directory service has a
record of a server that no longer exists. The DSA object could not be found.

I know for a fact that this DC does not hold any FSMO roles at all so that
rules out the first possibility and I know for sure that there isn't a
record of a server that no longer exists in the directory so that rules out
the second possibility. This server is a GC and DNS server and it points to
itself for DNS resolution.

I can't think of anything obvious that could be causing this. has anyone
else experienced this before or if not have any ideas of what could be
causing this?

Many thanks in advance everyone.

 

[Shaun Pillay]

Hi Everyone,

I've managed to resolve this by moving the DC back to the production site,
rebooting and forcing replication with its partners. I also noticed that the
KCC did not generate a replication partner with the PDC so I did that
manually and all seemed to work fine.

 

[Shaun Pillay]

Hi Everyone,

I've managed to resolve this by moving the DC back to the production site,
rebooting and forcing replication with its partners. I also noticed that the
KCC did not generate a replication partner with the PDC so I did that
manually and all seemed to work fine.

 

[Guest]

You can always try doing a dcpromo /forceremoval on this DC as we are unable
to dcpromo it down gracefully. Then seize fsmo roles off it to any working
DC. After that do a metadata cleanup and remove the entries of that DC from
AD and perform a force replication among the remaining DCs in order to sync
this info to all.