PDC broken - URGENT HELP NEEDED

[deliamay]

While I was away on my christmas break, the PDC of our NT4 domain crashed and will not re-start -it seems to be a hardware failure and we will need a new server.
We now have in the domain one BDC and 2 other member servers - since the crash, users can log on ok and access the data on the BDC but cannot access data on the other 2 servers.
I think i need to promote the BDC to PDC (could someone confirm this - is it essential ?) and then need to get a new BDC. From what i have read, it seems that you can't promote an ordinary server to be a BDC, but that we will have to get a new server and install it as a BDC. Or is it possible to make one of the other servers become a BDC?
many thanks

 

[deliamay]

yes the wins database is on the pdc - i tried nbtstat -c and i get a list of some of the pc's on the network including one of the offending servers but the problem remains the same. I tried removing a PC (not the server) from the domain and adding it again but the name is no longer recognised so i am not keen to do it with the server. I think i need to call in an expert, i don't know what else to try. Thanks everybody for your help.