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cannot uninstall AD

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3 replies

by kaves

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when i run dcpromo the uninstallation starts but halts in the middle with a message.
The operation failed because:

The directory service failed to replicate off changes made locally.
The DSA operation is unable to proceed because of a DNS lookup failure.

Any suggestions.

3 replies

by beermonster

In my case it was caused by the previous installation of AD crashing and not completing, no doubt different circumstances to you but still with similar results. Your DC, before uninstalling AD, will attempt to contact it's replication partners so that it can replicate any changes it is holding (IE new user \ machine accounts, password changes etc). In your case, it is unable to contact those partners (because of a dns problem)so will not let the uninstall complete, as this would mean the domainAD being left in an inconsistent state. What you do about this depends on whether you are using AD Intergrated DNS or not, and whether you in fact have any more domain controllers. If you have other DC's, and each DC hosts DNS, then go to the OTHER dc's, set their primary DNS server (IP config) to be the problem dc, and type ipconfig /registerdns This will cause them to insert the correct records into the problem servers dns and allow the problem server to contact them. Next set the problem servers primary DNS address in turn to the other dc's addresses, running ipconfig /registerdns after each. Next sync each server with it's replication partners (sites and services), wait 10 minutes, then try the uninstall again. The steps outlined aboveare really overkill for the situation, but are easier than having you pinpoint precisely which dc's are replicating with which and targetting them individually. If you have another dns model, then you will need to troubleshoot exactly why that dns is not resolving the names of your problem servers replication partners correctly. If you need help with that then give some details about your servers \ dns setup and we'll have a look from there. IF you in fact have no other dc's then that means that AD thinks you do, and we will need to use ntdsutil to go in and edit ad directly (lot easier than it sounds!). Hope this helps....

by kaves

There are 2 more DC's in the domain. When we were migrating from NT4 to 2000 we installed DC1 with reference to NT4 PDC. We later installed another DC2 also with reference to the NT4 PDC. Now we do not have the NT4 in the domain. We are facing this problem of uninstalling AD on DC3 which was installed with reference to DC1.
The message displayed now is
Operation failed because "Managing the n/w session with DC2 failed".
"logon Failure" The target account name is incorrect.
There is one moreproblem also that the updates made on DC2 are not in sync with DC1.But DC1 and DC3 are fully in sync.
The DC3 has not got the DNS name. When viewed in the Domain controllers list under AD of DC1 it shows DC3 as DC but on DC2 it shows it as a normal Workstation.

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