Old DC's showing up in diags...

[ArizonaGeek]

Currently the network we are running is almost all 2003, our DC's (two of them) are running 2003 standard. Our original domain was NT then upgraded to 2000 our original servers are long gone since we upgraded to 2003 last year.

We decommissioned our 2000 server after we moved over all the roles to an '03 machine. We are still seeing remnant's of our old domain controllers when we do a DCdiag and we see them pop up in our DNS once in a while even after we remove them. Is there some way we can get rid of these from ever showing up? I think it is causing us problems someplace and at the very least I want to rule that out. I am not even sure where these are coming from since we shut down these servers and made sure we properly removed them as DC's. Thanks for any help.

Cheers
Rob

 

[GVN]

The old DCs are totally shutdown and disconnected from the network? Did you delete the DNS pointers found in the DNS Admin console?

GVN

 

[ArizonaGeek]

Yes and when we demoted our old domain controllers, the demotion was supposed to be successful. I mean, it said it was successful but we are talking Microsoft here. We left the old servers in place for at least a month before removing them from the network and in fact turned the machines off but left them in the rack for a few weeks. Now they are sitting in a storage unit wasting away. We've wiped them clean so there is no getting anything back.

The problem is I think this whole domain is just screwed up totally. We have so many embedded processes that run (we are a financial company and do tons of number crunching and spitting out data 24/7) we HAVE to leave this network in place. The old admin was an idiot and was testing for his MCSE a few years ago & used this domain as practice space, so I am sure he screwed it up. I've been playing clean up for the last two years.

I've known about DNS and other issues since I started with this company and cleaned up most of the problems but only now are some becoming a real problem since we decided to install a new domain (hoping it would clear up some of the problems we have already and spare our users the problems.) We created a new domain under our forest but we are having all kinds of problems. Too many to list here. Every time we think we get one problem fixed it leads to another or we get all the way to the end of the solution we found only to have it not fix the problem. One of the things I see popping up is our old DC's ... so I am just trying to solve these issues one at a time.

I was a Unix admin for many years so only the last two, and more so the last year, have I really started to admin our Windows servers. I dont claim to be the all knowledgeable when it comes to Windows but I can say without a doubt I know more than this old Admin. Thanks again for any help...

Cheers
Rob

 

[GVN]

I know a lot of people will disagree with me but it seems that the more "bells and whistles" that MS puts in their products, they more weird issues they seem to harbor.

By the way, what made you slide over to the MS world from the UNIX world?

 

[WhoKilledKenny]

Sounds like you just have some junk floating around in the AD database. Use the following link to assist you in doing some clean-up. There is also a link to an MS KB article that will provide you more information....

http://www.petri.co.il/fix_unsuccessful_demotion.htm

Hope this helps...

 

[ArizonaGeek]

I know a lot of people will disagree with me but it seems that the more "bells and whistles" that MS puts in their products, they more weird issues they seem to harbor.

By the way, what made you slide over to the MS world from the UNIX world?

I would agree, bells and whistles tend to muck up Windows but whats worse is when you have someone using a production network for their very own testing environment. That is adding insult to injury.

A job got me out of the Unix/Linux world to a Windows world. I must say I find it pretty challenging. Unix is so straight forward and linear that working in a Windows world is quite the challenge. Of course it's mostly new to me so I learn new stuff every day. I had some experience in Windows (mostly rebooting the 2k servers in the data center I worked in. Windows reboot - once a week at least ... Sun or HPUX reboot - once a year, maybe) but not a lot of admin of it. I worked for a large three letter ISP on the east coast that kept (keeps) laying off people. I hated the east coast anyway so I decided to leave on my own terms instead of waiting for the inevitable.

Thanks WKK for the link, I actually found that about 10 minutes before you posted it. Now I think I've narrowed the problem down to a DNS replication error but I've dealt with this too long today so I am going to put this to rest till tomorrow. Thanks for the help!

Cheers
Rob