How do I demote a server?

[felixx]

Im not huge on NT4 and about the only thing I know about NT4 as far as dc's go is that there are PDC's and BDC's. He wants me to demote to a regular server and let it join another domain.
Do I use "Net Stop NetLogon"? and demote to server via ????


thanks for reading and any help you can assist with.

 

[Koonan]

Without using a third-party application you can't "demote" a NT4 domain controller and have it join another domain. In short it requires a reinstall of the OS.

You can purchase Upromote if you don't want to do a reinstall of the OS. I've used it a few times, but not for a long time.

http://www.pnltools.com/UPromote.asp

 

[LWComputingMVP]

Just supporting koonan -

There is no method built in to windows to demote a PDC or BDC to a member server. You either use 3rd party software or reinstall it. from scratch.

 

[terry712]

upromote works well

 

[N0ktar]

Just demote it in the registry, it's easy.

Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SECURITY\Policy and change the PolSrvRo setting from 3 to 2. (To make this change, you'll have to change the security access on the SECURITY key.) When you reboot the server, NT will demote it to a BDC.

 

[strongm]

N0ktar, the OP wants to demote a DC to a member server, not simply to demote a PDC to a BDC, I'm afraid.

Felixx, I'm another satisfied user (in the past) of UPromote for ths purpose

 

[AndrewTait]

UPromote is an excelent tool, and well worth the cost in order to save hours on re-installing and configuring your server.

However, one piece of advice, if your server is in a bad way software wise, then it may in the long run, be better to re-install.

On one occation, we needed to remove DNS and DHCP services from a server we had used upromote on, and due to problems with the installation and software running on the machine, we ended up re-installing anyway.

It may have been that we needed to remove these before using upromote, I don't know.

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And we never even know we have the key

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