No Burflags in registry

Question

I have a problem where my Windows 2012 Domain Controller SYSVOL and NETLOGON shares did not get created on my secondary domain controller. When I run dcdiag /q it tells me that it failed the advertising test, and cannot access the netlogon share.

Everything I have read about this issue tells me to do a non-authoritative restore by changing the registry value in:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NtFrs\Parameters\Backup/Restore\Process at Startup

However, I do not have this registry key in the registry. Is this the cause of my issue? Or do I have to create this key?

Solution

"burflags" was for FRS. Windows Server 2012 doesn't have FRS, so the comparable procedure is described in this lengthy article:

How to force an authoritative/non-authoritative synchronization for DFSR-replicated SYSVOL (like "D4/D2" for FRS)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2218556

Note that there are two separate procedures, one for authoritative, the other for non-authoritative.

"You want to force the non-authoritative synchronization of SYSVOL on a domain controller. In the File Replication Service (FRS), this was controlled through the D2 and D4 data values for the Burflags registry values, but these values do not exist for the Distributed File System Replication (DFSR) service. You cannot use the DFS Management snap-in (Dfsmgmt.msc) or the Dfsradmin.exe command-line tool to achieve this. Unlike custom DFSR replicated folders, SYSVOL is intentionally protected from any editing through its management interfaces to prevent accidents."

[...] the two procedures, like D2 (non-auth) or D4 (auth) ...

"If setting the authoritative flag on one DC, you must non-authoritatively synchronize all other DCs in the domain. Otherwise you will see conflicts on DCs, originating from any DCs where you did not set auth/non-auth and restarted the DFSR service. For example, if all logon scripts were accidentally deleted and a manual copy of them was placed back on the PDC Emulator role holder, making that server authoritative and all other servers non-authoritative would guarantee success and prevent conflicts.

If making any DC authoritative, the PDC Emulator as authoritative is preferable, since its SYSVOL contents are usually most up to date.

The use of the authoritative flag is only necessary if you need to force synchronization of all DCs. If only repairing one DC, simply make it non-authoritative and do not touch other servers.

This article is designed with a 2-DC environment in mind, for simplicity of description. If you had more than one affected DC, expand the steps to include ALL of those as well. It also assumes you have the ability to restore data that was deleted, overwritten, damaged, etc. previously if this is a disaster recovery scenario on all DCs in the domain."