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Looking for a guide to demote a failed 2003 dc and comprehensive guide to promote a new 2008r2 DC

lappladmin
lappladmin asked
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Last Modified: 2014-12-09
Hello Experts,

We have two domain controllers and both are running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise. One of them failed 3 months ago and it will not replicate anymore as it reached the tombstone period. We know that demoting a failed server only takes us about 5-10 mins as this is only apply to the perfect world. Currently the failed server is completely inaccessible and we are looking for a comprehensive guide to demote our failed server and promote one of our new server running windows 2008 R2.  We've read some articles on Microsoft website suggested to perform a dcpromo /forceremoval  on the failed dc and perform a meta cleanup on the primary domain controller. Or if there are some other methods that we can perform please let us know. Our goal is get this fix as soon as we can. Thank you for your time!
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Commented:
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Seth SimmonsLead Systems Administrator
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lappladmin

Author

Commented:
Seth - Do we really need to perform a force removal if the DC completely down? I mean hardware failed...
Walter Padrón

Commented:
No, if the hardware is failed and you never brings back online the server the only thing you need to do is metadata cleanup and seize the roles if the server holds one.
Seth SimmonsLead Systems Administrator
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Commented:
sorry...your explanation seemed a bit confusing
if the hardware is dead then yes, do a metadata cleanup
i imagine there is a plethora of replication warnings and errors on the active domain controller
lappladmin

Author

Commented:
Awesome guide. We were able to cleanup and promote the new 2008 server to a domain controller successfully!

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