Secondary DC removed but still "hanging" around

[dougmbti]

I have a Win 2K Server AD running fine a couple of Win 2K member servers and an Exchange 2K server. I had a secondary DC created on one of the servers to help with the load, but had to dcpromo that one out because I needed to get access to local security for some apps ...

Anyway, after using dcpromo to remove the second DC, I had 3 days in a row where the current AD server was pegged. That caused the SQL and Exchange servers to go offline. Restarting the network brought everything back on line.

I was reading some other posts on a different topic and someone mentioned to do a nslookup domainname and that would list all the DC's ip addresses on the network. The DC I demoted still has the IP address listed!!!

Could this be causing the network to go haywire and if so, how do I completely remove the second DC from that role?

Much thanks,
Doug Maurer

 

[Zelandakh]

You need to boot the DC to recovery console and use the command line to drop it out (ntdsutil). You can try to remove the NTDS Settings for the old DC then remove it but it rarely works.

 

[Zelandakh]

MarkDMac has a good FAQ in this forum on it too.

 

[dougmbti]

What would happen if I wanted to put the removed secondary DC back by running dcpromo on it again?

I can live with not having the functions for which I removed the DC if that means the network is running smoothly. I can put those processes on a different server.

 

[ascotta]

I don't think that would be a problem.

[blue]Arguably the best cat skinner around ! [/blue]

Cheers
Scott

 

[dougmbti]

Another thought is ... would running dcpromo on a different machine clean the AD?

Example. The secondary DC that I demoted is the user file server. If I wanted to promote the Exchange Server instead, would that promotion remove the entries still hanging around from the original secondary DC?

 

[buddafish]

no, promoting another machine will not remove the metadata of a different machine. look into using ntdsutil.exe to remove all traces of this dc in ad.

 

[dougmbti]

I guess there is no way around the ntdsutil ... thank you all for your help!!

Doug

 

[stupman]

follow steps in Q216498.