DC Disaster Recovery - Please HELP Urgently!!!

[gscheepers]

Hi everyone,

Our master DC has gone haywire and we are in the process of rebuilding it. When we use the active directory wizard to create the DC, it fails half way through with an error message:

Could not find domain controller for this domain.

The DC I'm trying to replicate with is at another site and I'm connecting over a WAN connection.

I'd appreciate your urgent help!


Gerhard Scheepers

"Great souls have wills; feeble ones only wishes..."

 

[AJP69]

Before you run DCpromo check that you have installed DNS and that DNS can see the other DC.

You may want to check basic comms to the other DC with ping, pathping and traceroute.

You have to be careful of your first DCc goes down, anetwork can survive if there is another DC around but if that server is never coming back there are specific cmd line utils to kill it off. On the other hand if you are repairing the original DC due to a hardware failure you can bring it back on line.

Either way your going to need to redefine/confirm the operations masters.

I would get hold of the Active Directory ops guide, it is 200 pages but some really good technical info in there.

AJ

 

[alwayshungry]

There could be many things that is preventing you from rebuilding the dc server. What went haywire, hardware or software?

 

[northerntech]

In windows 2000 there is no longer such a thing as a master or primary domain controler and a backup domain controler such as there was in windows NT4. Because of this you can DC promo then have the other server replicate with yours to restore the Active directory. If you are having trouble getting it to DC promo then you should install a Microsoft Virtual loopback adapter. This can be added just like any other network adapter under add hardware- Microsoft-Microsoft virtual loopback adapter. Once you have promoted your server then make sure that the server you are trying to recover your Active directory from and the one you are rebuilding have a trust relationship so that you can sync the Active directory and restore it to the one you have just promoted.

 

[gscheepers]

Thanks for all the help so far guys. But the problem doesn't seem to go away that easy...

I've managed to sync the 'new' DC with the DC from the remote site. GREAT!

But, I'm having problems assigning it as RID master. PDC emulator and Infrastructure role are transferred.

I can also mention that I was unable to do a system state restore since the clown that our backup set, didn't think it would be necessary to ever make a backup of it.

Pleeeeeeeeeeeaaaaase help! I'm desperate! Don't think I'm going home tonight!

Gerhard Scheepers

"Great souls have wills; feeble ones only wishes..."

 

[northerntech]

Go to the following site to get information on how to assign it as RID master. Hope this helps

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...3/proddocs/entserver/sag_adSeizeRIDMaster.asp

 

[northerntech]

Just noticed that this might help you even more with information in your situation. All the best

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr.../tcevents/itevents/windows2000srv/tnt1-76.asp

 

[gscheepers]

Thanks for everything thus far! At 5am this morning DNS decided to pull the plug on me! I'm currently getting errors saying that there are duplicate accounts in the SAM (Event 12252). I've tried to see if I can find any duplicate accounts using ntdsutil, but nothing's in the log file.

Almost feels like I'm back at the beginning again... only one difference - now I don't have any DNS servers that's working.

Any ideas???

Gerhard Scheepers

"Great souls have wills; feeble ones only wishes..."