I've seen a lot of information on the topic of upgrading an NT4 PDC to Windows 2000, and demoting an NT4 PDC to a member server, but I'm having problems.
Our office currently has an NT4 server acting as a PDC. We purchased a new machine to upgrade to Windows 2000 because the old machine can't handle win2k. Here are the steps I took to try and upgrade:
1.) Installed NT4 on new machine and made it a BDC to the domain.
2.) Sync'd up the BDC to the PDC.
3.) Removed the old machine (PDC) and promoted the new machine.
4.) Upgraded the new machine to Windows 2000.
Now, once that process was complete, none of the machines on the network wanted to log into the newly created Windows 2000 DC. So, I...
5.) Brought the old machine back on the network, which saw the new Windows 2000 machine as the PDC, and therefore, stopped the netlogon service.
6.) Then I edited the registry to demote the old machine to a BDC and restarted.
This process worked. The old machine was a BDC and sync'd up with the Windows 2000 DC (I know this because I added a test user to the Windows 2000 machine AFTER I made the upgrade and the old machine added it.) but no machine will log into the new Windows 2000 machine. Also, we're running a Linux box that is a DNS server, so AD can't really run DNS unless I make it a secondary DNS server. Is this causing problems?
Okay, so now that you have all the background (sorry), How can I complete the Upgrade to Windows 2000, keep all the users from the old domain, and make the NT4 machine a BDC to the Windows 2000 server?
I have thought of the following options:
1.) Install 2000 on the new machine (fresh) and make it a BDC to the NT4 domain (will this work?)
2.) Install NT4 on the new machine as a BDC and then promote it and let it handle authentication for a while, then upgrade (maybe clients need to see the new PDC in NT4 before it will work in Windows 2000
HELP!!!
Thank you,
Russ7ski
