I have one Primary Domain Controller & one Backup Domain Controller. For some reason, when I logged into the BDC last week it froze and everyone seemed to lose Windows connectivity. This week I logged into my PDC and I locked up on console, but not everyone did although there was a slowness in accessing certain apps.
My understanding is if PDC down, then BDC lets everyone log in or vica-versa. [The idea I had in mind was to have the BDC be a fully functional fail-over in case PDC was unavailable.] I can’t seem to find an associated event log entry. I have both PDC & BDC as DHCP servers [PDC address pool 100-176 & BDC pool 177-254]. Is the prevent of people logging caused by the inability of finding a DHCP server? Is there an explicit how-to document of how a PDC & BDC work to help PC’s “always” logged when one of DC’s are “not found”? I hope I am clear enough as to what I am asking. [O/S=W2K3 Server & WinXP-Pro-SP3 on clients] I appreciate any insight to Windows domain LAN connectivity issues concerning PDC & BDC.]