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Demoting Domain Controller

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by rogued,mcse 3 views

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I have recently been tasked to develop an integration plan for merging two separate network domains. I want to migrate the smaller domain into the larger domain. The smaller domain is running Exchange, SQL and other services on its PDC. I plannedon demoting it to a BDC, but was wondering if there is anyway I can demote it to a member server? Sorry, re-installing is not an option. Don't spend too much time on this, you'll either know or you won't. 100 points to the best answer. Thanks

12 replies

by jkelley

I am sorry to say that there is no way to demote a PDC or a BDC to a member server without reinstalling.

by keithpup

No. You can simply back up the information and reinstall NT server choosing the "make member of domain" or oh no thats the only way. The PDC/BDC set up is different than setting up a "member" server

by tony.colgrove

You can not demote a PDC/BDC in NT4 to a member server. Even if you were able to you will have other issues with your service accounts for Ex and SQL. The Exchange SA relies on the SID of the service account. If you decommision the small domain your App Services are on, you will need to do a disaster recovery scenario to correct all the services that will fail on Exchange. I believe SQL follows down this same line.
Your best bet would be to actually consolidate both domains into a new Win2K AD. Microsofts ADMT allows for SA migration and knows how to handle Exchange and SQL during a consolidation/migration.

by cshultz

In agreement with most of the other comments. You might try to investigate some third party solutions that presume to demote DC's to member servers. I believe FastLane Technologies has one. Even so, it will be a very intensive task. This won't address your Exchange or SQL issues either. Your SQL install will have big trouble if you rename the DC (or any server it's installed on). Mapping a migration to 2000 may be the best and "cleanest" approach.

by rogued,mcse

I think you and the person before you were on the right track. I hadn't investigated third party at all.

by zk

There are third party tools you can use to demote PDC to a member server. But they are not free and I haven't tried them.

I've done the following.
You can demote the PDC of the smaller domain to BDC. Then you can use the free NewSID (version 3) tool from (www.sysinternals.com) to synchronize the SID with the PDC of the larger domain. This will make smaller domain's PDC, the BDC of the large domain w/o reinstalling.

Note of advice. This method works, but MS won't support it. And also likeprevious people mentioned, sevices that are SID-aware (I know proxy is) won't like it. It is a risk. So depends on how critical. Don't get me wrong. Normal stuffs like login, printing works w/o problem. But, exchange, sql, I don't know.

Here is my tale. Somebody in charge of one small domain (6 nodes) for one of our web sites asked me about this. I gave him this solution & warning. He did the above, together w/ other things. Then all his COM, MTS objects started failing and he screamed "I can't create object!". 2 days with MS support on the phone, still no solution. One reason is he didn't tell MS, he renamed the PDC, the domain name, the BDC moved from another domain. I can't tell him what to do 'coz he is my boss and he said he knows NT. It was a mess, took me one whole day to clean up (delete all users except default) recreate, redo services, reinstall IIS .

Just be careful. Good luck.

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