Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of gateguard
gateguard

asked on

Downgrading a Domain Controller in W2K Active Directory

When I run dcpromo to change a Domain Controller back to a simple server, are there any changes I must manually make to the Active Directory?
SOLUTION
Avatar of juliancrawford
juliancrawford

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of Casca1
Casca1

No, as long as you have another DC in AD, it shouldn't, and I stress, SHOULD not be a problem.
Juliancrawford, on the other hand, gave some excellent information.
Good Luck...
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of gateguard

ASKER

kmorriss, so if we format the DC, how to remove it from Active Directory.  Just simply delete the object?  Somewhere I remember reading it must be "removed from the AD schema".
julian.  Those links contain a wealth of information.  the troubleshooting chart is great.  In our case, the networking and name resolution was ok.  The authentication was the problem.
sorry gateguard, i do not know about that.  If i remember correctly, we just ran DCPROMO and it did everything.  You should be save to format it after that.  I am sure there is a way to "unregister" a computer name from being a DC in AD. I am trying to remember.  we set up 5 domains in the class (all on different subnets) had one DC, then added one, then removed one.

I cant seem to find my Active Directory book, but i beleive you can select the server in the Domain Controllers section and remove one that way.  If it was running any services, you will need to move them to another domain controller (like DFS, if it was a Catalog server, etc..)

Hope this helps.
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Thanks to ocon827679 for the information on the fismo roles. Having been running an AD SoHo network for a couple of years, and having reverted a couple of servers myself, I have never observed one acting "Funny" afterwards, and the only problem I have had was when I wiped a DC for a subdomain without, and I stress WITHOUT running DCPromo to remove it. I learned QUITE a bit about the command line tool NTDSutil, and I still have issues with the training domain showing up in browse lists. DO NOT just format the drive... 8-)
If dcpromo fails there are two questions:

1) how to restore the machine to a reuseability
2) how to get the DC out of the Active Directory

#1 is fairly simple

But #2 is what I'm unsure of.  Isn't there a tool for editing the Active Directory schema and removing pointers to the failed DC?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial