I’m building a server right now for a remote office. And due to some network issues, the DC it tried to use to get information during the DCPromo process failed to correctly get all the settings. As a result we have a new DC that thinks it’s an Active Directory controller but cannot actually process anything since it cannot talk to the domain. In order to start over I did the following:
1) Using the steps provided in this article remove all entries related to this server from the regular active directory domain controllers.
2) Delete the computer account for the offending server from Active Directory.
3) Unplug the borked domain controller from the network.
4) Using the same article from step 1. Remove all metadata related to the existing working domain controllers. This makes the bad serve think it’s the only one in the domain.
5) Run dcpromo to demote the server and check the box specifying that it’s the last server in the domain.
6) Remove the server from the domain.
7) Wait for AD replication to complete before rejoining the server to the domain.
8) Rerun dcpromo.
Voila, you should now have a working DC.
Note: Some people have experienced problems re-promoting the server with the same name. You may need to rename the server prior to adding it back into the domain. This is usually due to some leftover information stuck in Active Directory.
Later,
Gary
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