Reinstall ActiveDirectory only

  • Thread starter Thread starter adeveloper
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A

adeveloper

Hi,

We have a Windows 2000 Server (SP4) which had Active Directory on it and was
working normally. Recently we had a corrupted disk and our network guy had
to do perform some sort of ziggery pockery to replace the corrupt disk and
restore the machine. Now Active Directory had failed on the machine, when
you try to open the Active Directory MMC type administration console you get
the message "Naming information cannot be located because: No authority
could be contacted for authentication. Contact your system administrator to
verify that your domain is properly configured and is currently online.".
(I got that error message text via cut and paste thanks to Joel of
www.joelonsoftware.com brillant tip that you can "Ctrl+C to copy the text of
a Windows popup error message box to the clipboard")

Now our network guy says that he can't run dcpromo because Active Directory
(AD) is corrupt or something (apparently he has looked at the easy options).
Some people are suggesting we reinstall the entire machine to be able to
reinstall AD. I don't like that approach because there is a bit of software
on the machine and we will need to reinstall it all and I am worried that it
will take too long. We tried reinstall AD from a backup and this didn't
work either.

My preference would be just to completely remove and reinstall Active
Directory. Question - can we do that without reinstalling Windows? (assume
we can't recover AD from a backup)

Any other suggestions for troubleshooting this situation?

Most grateful for any suggestions - or in the absence of those war stories,
anecdotes, jokes, limericks, or philosophical statements.
Pete
 
Naming information cannot be located because: No authority
could be contacted for authentication. Contact your system administrator to
verify that your domain is properly configured and is currently online.".
Click to expand...


This sounds like your DNS in not set up correctly. AD totally relies on
proper DNS setup to "find the domain".

See:
Best Practices for DNS Client settings in Windows 2000 server and in Windows
Server 2003

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;825036



Remember, the DNS server IS a client.



Setting Up the Domain Name System for Active Directory

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;237675



How to configure DNS for Internet access in Windows 2000

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;300202





hth

DDS W 2k MVP MCSE
 
Thanks a lot for the info.
If the DNS fixing option fails then is it possible to reinstall Active
Directory without reinstalling windows?
 
To remove AD you have to run dcpromo. Running it a second time will install
AD. You really can't run DCpromo (now) until DNS is set up properly. If DNS
is set up properly and you can run dcpromo I would suspect AD would work as
expected.
I have not seen a case where AD was corrupt (but I have not seen
*everything*) I have seen time and time again where DNS was not set up
correctly and AD "appeared" to be corrupt.

AD totally relies on DNS and the SRV records stored there. This is the
"naming information" the error message is talking about.

hth
DDS W 2k MVP MCSE
 
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