Windows 2003 dcpromo demote failure

Question

I'm rebuilding the server mentioned in this question.

However before I do blow it away I would like to move its operations off of it first. DHCP and ePO are taken care of and now all that is left is a demote for AD.

When following the dialogs it gives me an error of:

The operation failed because:

Managing the network session with server.domain.local failed

"Logon Failure: The target account name is incorrect."

I think my options are:

1. If there is a fix/workaround I could use to demote this machine.
2. Or nuke it now as it stands.

If I choose option 2 are there any specific things I need to do on my network to make sure it is nuked properly? Any possible gotchas?

Also if I do a dcpromo /forceremoval will I need to do anything else on my network?

Things I have checked:

• It is not an operations master server
• Turned off the global catalog (it still thinks it is one).

Thanks in advance.

Solution

I love the Petri forum.

Here's your answer. Delete Failed DC

Personally, I've been on networks with a few ghostly DC's floating around. Nothing much bad ever happened except you would get some DNS errors when the servers would try and contact them.

I would make a good backup of AD, and then follow the directions if you feel the urge to get rid of it completely

Good luck.

Comments

[Dayton Brown]

Did you just dump the DC without cleaning up AD?

[Qwerty]

The server has been rebuilt and is working great. Also Yes, when I dumped the DC I did clean up the AD.