Crashed DC not demoted; brought back online not as DC

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Guest

I manage a small Windows 2000 network (50 users). We had the only DC
experience a multiple hard drive failure. It also acted as our only Exchange
server (5.5). We were able to bring it back online long enough to promote a
new server (Windows 2003) to be the DC. We then rebuilt the old server,
forgetting to demote it as a DC first, reinstalled OS & Exchange 5.5 using
the same name for the server. Now the new DC is trying to replicate with it
causing NTDS replication event errors and NtFrs event warnings. The old DC
still is shown in Active Directory Sites & Services, but, of course, it does
not see itself as a DC. It's our ultimate goal to migrate Exchange 5.5 to
Exchange 2003 on a new Windows 2003 server & retire the old server or
reformat it & use it only as a file server. But we would like to clean up the
meta data that is still in AD before.
I tried to use NTDSUtil but when you get to step 15 it warns that the server
that caused the orphan meta data should be offline & never brought online
again.
What should we do? Can we use dcpromo and promote the old DC to a DC & then
demote it? Or will that add to the problem?
Can we migrate Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003, drop the old server online,
wait & test that the new Exchange is working fine; then use NTDSUtil to clean
up the meta data; reformat the old server & bring it up using a different
name?
 
TimP said:
I manage a small Windows 2000 network (50 users). We had the only DC
experience a multiple hard drive failure. It also acted as our only Exchange
server (5.5). We were able to bring it back online long enough to promote a
new server (Windows 2003) to be the DC. We then rebuilt the old server,
forgetting to demote it as a DC first, reinstalled OS & Exchange 5.5 using
the same name for the server. Now the new DC is trying to replicate with it
causing NTDS replication event errors and NtFrs event warnings. The old DC
still is shown in Active Directory Sites & Services, but, of course, it does
not see itself as a DC. It's our ultimate goal to migrate Exchange 5.5 to
Exchange 2003 on a new Windows 2003 server & retire the old server or
reformat it & use it only as a file server. But we would like to clean up the
meta data that is still in AD before.
I tried to use NTDSUtil but when you get to step 15 it warns that the server
that caused the orphan meta data should be offline & never brought online
again.
Click to expand...
(...)

You can clean up metadata from the data of old DC and leave this DC
server as member server n Your domain it can also be exchange 5.5
server. Then You can perfrom migration of Excahgne server and then
rebuild the old machine if You want to.
 
This is what I wanted to hear, but why when I reached step 15 (the step
before it cleans up the meta data) a warning is given that the server that is
being clean should not be online or be brought back online?
 
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