Global Catalog problem (and more)

[malaize2]

In Jan. 2007 our company network consisted of a Windows 2000 server. I configured a new Windows 2003 server, set up AD, made it the PDC and then demoted the Windows 2000 server to a BDC. I attempted to transfer the 5 FSMO roles from win2000 to win2003. At the time all roles except the 'Schema Master Role' transferred. After troubleshooting for a while I was able to get this role transferred to win2003 after making sure the win2003 user acct was a member of the Schema Master group in AD.
If I had the win2000 server powered down it would take 5-10 min. for users to log onto the network. I did some reading and figured that this was a GC issue. In the 'Directory Service' area of Event Viewer there are errors every day saying 'AD was unable to establish a connection with the global catalog'. I checked my DNS and made sure that all DNS Forward Lookup Zones were pointing to the win2003 server and not the win2000 server. After these changes I powered down the win2000 server and rebooted some network pcs and the sign in process did not take 5-10 min. (yay) I still have the GC errors every day but at least it doesn't take users 5-10 min to log in if the win2000 server is down. I would like to get the GC errors taken care of but have ran out of ideas. Does anyone know what else I can do. Sorry if I left out any info. Clearly you can see that I am not an expert at Windows Server, etc.

Thanks,

malaize

 

[bracadar]

Make sure all workstations' Preferred DNS is this server and dynamic DNS updates are enabled on the AD zones in DNS.Then you ran netdiag /fix to verify all your DNS setting are good.

 

[mrdenny]

Did you make the new machine a global catalog?

Denny
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[malaize2]

Thanks for the replies.

Bracadar, I have dynamic DNS updates enabled. Also have the workstations using the new server as the preferred DNS server. I downloaded the netdiag utility and double clicked the exe to run it. I tried typing netdiag /fix at the command line but it wouldn't work that way. When I ran it it created netdiag.log. The Domain Membership Test failed. It said "This system volume has not been completely replicated to the local machine. This machine is not working properly as a DC."

mrdenny, yes I have the win2003 server set as a GC.

malaize

 

[ntinlin]

Are there global catalog entries in DNS for your W2003 server?

Neill

 

[malaize2]

Hi Neill,

I looked in the DNSMGNT console for global catalog entries, but didn't see any. Where exactly should these entries be located?

Thank you

malaize