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Cannot remove DC from Domain

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3 replies

by musenwaid

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Hi

Im am trying to demote a domain controller but im getting the follwing error

'The Operation faile because:

A domain controller could not be contacted for the domain that contained an account for this computer. Make the computer a member of a workgroup the rejoin the domain before retrying the promotion.

"The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted"'.

The server is not the last DC and i can ping the the oher DC

3 replies

by netwrk_admn

Is your DNS set up correctly, did you by chance remove the DNS server from the admin tools?

What OS are you running, any other details?

by churdoo

As netwrk said, DNS may be broken or improper, and/or replication is broken. Why are you demoting, to "fix" a problem? If so it's likely that the same problem is interfering with a clean demotion.

Easiest thing will be to make sure DNS is working, the DNS in the TCP/IP properties should contain the IP of a DC that's staying a DC, and you should check that replication is working either by viewing the Event Viewer and by forcing a replication in AD Sites and Services.

If you cannot get things to play well and you want to force the demotion anyway, you can use the /forceremoval switch on DCPROMO, proceed with the forced demotion, but then you'll have to do an NTDSUTIL / METADATA CLEANUP on your remaining DC(s) to remove the metadata of the old server from the active directory.

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