Promoting a BDC to PDC status

I assume you are talking about nt 4.0 and You are not specific as to what the server is used for but if the machine was configured as a bdc and the server is only responsible for authentication yes you can just promote it but if you want it to preform the exact same tasks as your current pdc if it does more than authentication they need to be configured simularly.

DHCP, WINS and other network services may or may NOT be on your PDC. If you take down a PDC without any other services, then you can promote a BDC to PDC with out much troubles. However if there are any network service running on the PDC, you muststart them on the promoted server after you hve promoted it to PDC.

Yes, it is as simple as that, just promote the BDC as PDC, remember you can not have two PDCs at the same time so you have to take down your actual PDC. On the other hand PDCs server have nothing to do with DHCP servers, ok, so if your PDC is also aDHCP server you need to have your backups up-to-date and probably you'll have to reconfigure it.
But first of all check if your PDC is also DHCP server, if it only carries a DHCP IP address then you have nothing to worry about.

Good luck,

@lberto

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