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Domain Controller not replicating to the primary DC

Hello-

I have 2 windows 2003 servers standard w/ SP2 on them.They are both domain controllers. I have a bunch of the same errors on one of the domain controllers. The errors consist of Event ID: 2108 & 1084 Source: NTDS Replication Category: Replication. The other error is Event ID: 476 Source: NTDS ISAM Category: Database Page Cache. I first noticed these errors when I had problems with a user. Sometimes the user can login to the network and sometimes she couldn't. So I deleted her account from the AD and recreated it. However, when I deleted the account from the PDC it didn't replicate over to the BDC. I then tried to force a replication by going into AD sites and services and doing a replication now and received this error: The following error occurred during the attempt to synchronize the context "Domain" from domain "" controller to domain controller "": While accessing the hard disk a disk operation failed even after retries.

This one domain controller is a mess. Any help is greatly appreciated

For the record I inherited these 2 servers and now just trying to clean up the network for my users.
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nettek0300

You may want to check this knowledge base article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837932.  It gives you a few things to try to resolve the issue.
You may try running dcdiag and netdiag to try and narrow down what is interrupting replication.  There are a lot of factors.  Use of replmon and repadmin to spot where and why the failures occur should help as well.

Replmon Overview: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772954.aspx
RepAdmin Overview: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc755360(WS.10).aspx
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ASKER

I will give these suggestions a try and get back to you guys with the info. Thanks
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ASKER

I just Attached my netdiag log and my dcdiag log while I look into replmon and repadmin. Thanks.
Trying to resolve this issue as soon as possible.
DCDiag.txt
NetDiag.log
Happily those both basically look okay.

Check this out: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837932

It seems to specifically apply to this series of events.  There are a few reasons that it can happen, but it at least they're all something to remedy.  Be sure you have enough space on the appropriate partitions and after you give the remedy in the link a shot, post back if we can offer additional help.
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LANm0nk3y
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JMorganRead - I will check that link out shortly, I just got a few things to do this morning.

LANm0nk3y - I forgot to mention that even though it's the BDC, It houses DHCP too and the PDC doesn't have DHCP installed. Don't ask!

Thanks Guys.
DHCP can be exported and imported.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281626

Not sure how large your orgnanization and how many routers/subnets you have.  But if it's a single subnet then you don't need to update any router configs.

If you have maybe one or two subnets, then you might just want to add a "ip helper-address a.b.c.d"

Of course a.b.c.d would be the address of your PDC.
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ASKER

There are four subnets in place on the BDC. (10.120.0.0, 10.120.1.0, 10.120.2.0, 10.120.3.0).
Can I just promote another server in the environment to a domain controller and demote this BDC. The BDC has 1 network printer on it, a couple of shares, TS and DHCP? Another thing, should the dns in TCP/IP settings on the BDC be pointing to itself or the PDC.  
If the DNS is running on the BDC, otherwise you can use PDC's DNS.  I generally use the loopback 127.0.0.1 (or the IP of the NIC -- but why do that?  If you change IP then you have to go and change it again) for the primary DNS the an alternative on the secondary DNS.  I set it up this way because 1, when the server boots up it wants to look up to DNS.  If the DNS is unavailable, it would generate errors and such.

The DNS should be replicated automatically.  It sounds like this BDC that you're going to take down has a lot more than just DHCP.  It has a few shares and terminal server.  If you have a test computer that's not in service, I would promote it and see if the replication is smooth.  You really shouldn't run TS on a DC anyhow (a lot of security risk).
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ASKER

I will try out the test computer on Monday.

Thanks
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Can I promote a server that's already in production to the BDC, transfer DHCP and then demote the current BDC to a member server? Will users still be able to connect to the TS, Shares, and printer on the BDC that I demote? Thanks in advance.
Yes.

As long as you don't change the server names.
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LANm0nk3y- another thing, I was thinking about installing aother drive in my BDC with the replication issues and mirror the first drive, then once mirroring is finished try to replicate now again from AD sites and services to see if that works. If it does, I will totally get rid of the first drive. I'm attaching the replication error That I'm getting on the BDC.
ReplicationError.bmp
I'm not sure if that's really going to fix your problem.  One other thing you could check is the time/date/timezone of the server, if they are relatively close (a few seconds off is ok).  Sometimes DCs won't replicate because of that.  I know you can't even join a domain if the date/time is off.  But if it's already joined, that's a different story.
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So why is the error referencing a disk operation error? That's weird. I'm going to go to the site where the server is at and look at what's going on. I will check time and date and anything else when I reach my destination.

Thanks
Well... Now it's coming back.  You could do that and see if it is a hardware problem.
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Thanks a lot LANm0nk3y. The FSMO role info was of vital important prior to the dcpromo.