Active Directory Rollback

[twayderzzz]

Hey All,

I have a question, and I was hoping for some insight. A couple months ago, I started the AD upgrade to our domain. I was assigned another project and am now back to the upgrade after 2 months of neglect. I'd like to start fresh, so......

My question is this. Can I run dcpromo to uninstall AD, and remove the 2 Win2k domain controllers without affecting the network.

I still have a NT PDC and 2 NT BDC's running.


Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.


-Wade

 

[brontosaurus]

did you actually upgrade your existing NT4 PDC to 2K, or did you create a new domain with the 2K servers in preparation for a migration?

 

[twayderzzz]

Bronto, thanks for the quick reply!!!!

I built a 4th BDC, and promoted it to the PDC role, and upgraded that machine. Then I built a second Win2k based DC.

It seems that during my absence, the Old NT PDC was promoted back to the PDC role, so now I have no replication between the AD and the SAM. Its pretty messy.

What I'm looking for is the easiest and most painless way of starting from scratch. I'm still very new to the process, and really appreciate your patience with me.

Thanks

w

 

[brontosaurus]

oh boy, that don't sound so good...tell you what, you need to test a couple things first. You can demote the 2nd DC you built, but leave the first one alone for now. After you demote #2, wait a bit and see if things are still working in the domain. If so, take the remaining 2K DC offline, don't demote it, just unplug the network. Give it a couple of days, and see if that causes you any grief. If not, we can move on from there...but if so, we've got more to talk about...

 

[twayderzzz]

Sounds Good.

I'm demoting the second Win2k DC as we speak.

Ive noticed that some machines are still authenticating against the NT PDC??? Which leads me to believe that the NT DC's are still functioning normally.

It seems to me that removing the 2k DC's would simply render them member servers in the existing domain. Am I way off in that assumption???

Ill keep you posted with the details, and thanks again Bronto....

 

[brontosaurus]

well, that's what we're trying to find out, whether any of your clients are authenticating against the 2K DC's or not. As for the demoting on the 2nd DC, it should actually render it a stand-alone server, not a member of your NT domain.

 

[twayderzzz]

OK, I demoted the DC, it remained a member of the domain, and nothing detrimental has happened yet.

 

[brontosaurus]

right, demotion of that DC will make it a member of the original 2K DC's domain, which should not be a problem. I was referring to demoting the last 2K DC...confusing, sorry about that. Keep me posted.