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!
Our community of experts have been thoroughly vetted for their expertise and industry experience.