DC not replicated in over 60 days 1

[jpp]

I have a DC in a Windows 2003 AD that has been offline for over 60 days.
I tried to demote it and remove AD I was unsuccessful probably because at this point, other DC's don't want to talk to it because it has been over 60 days.
So it seems i have 2 choices:

- bring it back into the fold by forcing a replication (e.g. forcing another DC to talk to it) , but taking the chance that some objects that were deleted will reappear in the AD. I am not sure if there is also a danger that some objects may have status changed (e.g. go from disabled to enabled because this DC never got the message that they should be disabled).

- forcibly remove it from AD, by going to each remaining DC and doing a "metadata" cleanup
i don't like this choice because I fear traces of the DC may still be left behind after we do this.

Are there any other choices. Any one have experience and recommendations on what to do in this scenario?
thanks.

 

[mlichstein]

- forcibly remove it from AD, by going to each remaining DC and doing a "metadata" cleanup
i don't like this choice because I fear traces of the DC may still be left behind after we do this."

This is the only reasonable option. This is one of the reasons why you should have multiple domain controllers. Since you do, it makes this sort of situation relatively easy to deal with.

dcpromo /forceremoval, then metadata cleanup with KB216498 is the way to go. If you follow the steps in 216498, there will be no traces of that DC left behind.

 

[jpp]

Thanks for your advice.
Would I have to do this on every DC ?
Or just one and then replication will sync the changes with the other DC's ?

 

[mlichstein]

I assume you mean do the metadata cleanup? You only need to do that on one DC, and the changes will replicate to the rest of your DCs.