Source has exceeded tombstone?

[bofhrevenge2]

One of our sister schools is having a problem very much like the one in the article below, unfortunatly they havent been checking the event logs so are unsure when it started. The two servers have only been installed for three months so it's possible they have never been replicating properly.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Windows_Server_2003/Q_21045503.html

It is possible that the removal of a second NIC a week ago might of caused it, this was connected to an small NT4 network for document sharing.

A look in active directory shows a majority of accounds created in the last three weeks are there with a couple missing on the second server which seems to indicate some replication has occured recently.

Can anyone tell me if option three from the above document to force replication to start is a good idea.

Thanks.

 

[bofhrevenge2]

On further inspection as they do most management on the first server that seems almost completely as they want it, does this change the situeation?

Would it be possible to demote the second server then promote it back to a DC?

Cheers.

 

[bofhrevenge2]

Ok we managed to trace the problem back to a time change a couple of months ago (changed the year by accident) not long after install.

FYI

It involved a registry edit to add an entry.
Go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NTDS\Parameters

And add the dword:
Allow Replication With Divergent and Corrupt Partner

Set the value to 1

We then alowed a replication to occur and removed the reg edit to restore the error protection, we haven't had any errors since and the active directory seems identical on both servers.

I would certainly be warey about doing this in a large environment but as there was only two servers in this case it wasn't going to be a complete disaster.