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Rename a Domain?

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7 replies

by tpcosmo 1 view

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work for a small company that is breaking up. We have a small WAN consisting of a just a few servers that make up our W2K domain, with three exchange servers, and three sites. In the process of selling these business I need to convert the servers tostand alone. See my other posting https://www.techrepublic.com/forumqa/thread_detail.jhtml?thread_id=98693

where I asked about stand alone servers. Now I'm thinking if I could rename the domain, I could create three seperate domains, and not have to screw around with AD, and Exchange too much.
So my question is: Can I rename a windows 2000 DC with the same computer name, but a different domain name.

7 replies

by joseph moore

Well, you can remove a DC from an exiting domain, and then add it as a DC for another domain.
For example, if you have 3 DCs up, you can demote one of them, then promote it to as a DC in its own domain. YOu could then build a Trust between the twodomains.
In doing all this, you can keep the existing machine names.
You also might want to look at this Technet article Q296592, just to be safe:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q296592
(please remove any spaces)

Since you are also concerned about keeping existing user accounts, you can use LDIFDE to transfer the user accounts from the current domain to the new domain over the Trust. I would do this BEFORE removing the last DC from the original domain.Once you users are over, you remove the last DC from the old domain, then promote it to be a DC in the new domain.

hope this helps

by avswamy

no it is not possible to change name of a computer or domain name while it is a domain controller and ad installed, you have only one choice dcpromo and uninstall the ad and install ad, while installing ad u can do what ever u like.

just run dcpromo it will lead u to removing ad and dns from ur server, then it becomes a stand alone server.

i am sure about it there is no second choice.

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