Jim_F

Thanks Sted & Michael! You guys got me thinking along the right path again. Changed my thinking back to the possible. ;-) In Windows 2008, the DC cannot be renamed through the interface, it must be done through the shell using NETDOM. Ref: Rename Windows Server 2008 Domain Controllers As for the AD error, there was a replication issue. The reinstalling of the W2K3 server left some baggage behind and the fSMORoleOwner of the DomainDNSZones was orphaned. To correct the issue I had to run fixfsmo.vbs script. Ref: Error message when you run the "Adprep /rodcprep" command in Windows Server 2008: "Adprep could not contact a replica for partition DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=Contoso,DC=com"

They reloaded from scratch, ran updates, installed AD, but could not restore that servers AD copy from backup, so they ran DCPROMO and joined it that way. Well when I go into Advanced System Properties on the 2008 server and click Change on the Computer Name tab, it reports: Domain controllers cannot be moved from one domain to another, they must first be demoted... Which is fine, it will be on the same domain, so I click 'OK'. But the computer name is grayed. The Full Computer name is just displayed, so I click "More". I get the DNS Suffix and NetBIOS Computer Name window, and only the Primary DNS suffix of this computer is editable. The function level of AD is Windows Server 2003. I'll look further into replication issues.

Hello, I have a forest with two Win 2003 servers and a new 2008 server. w2k3data, w2k3app, w2k8data. There was some prep work we had to run on AD prior to joining the 2008, and that was successful. At some point, someone gained access to the c:\windows directory of the w2k3data and ran a del *.*; that server became unbootable and we had to reinstall it and re promo it. (I add this tit bit because they may have missed the required steps in preparing it for 2008 after a reinstall from the 2003 disc. -- one would hope that it would have failed dcpromo if that were the case.) Fast forward six months. Now we are trying to add some new software to the 2008 and the software vendor doesn't like the machine name and we have to change the unchangable. The plan was to demote 2008, remove AD, change name, add AD, and repremote. I found that the w2k3data did not have a check to be a 'global catalog' server. So I checked the box in ADSS to make it a global catalog like w2k3app. I also wend into w2k8data and removed its 'global catalog' check. Then allowed 24hrs for the change to populate. Now when I run dcpromo on the w2k8data to demote it I get an error: operation failed. ADDS could not transfer the remaining data in directory partition DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=mydomain,DC=local to Active Directory Domain Controller \\w2k3app.mydomain.local. This concerns me because there have been no faults with w2k3app since joining w2k8data. I only have one 2008 server and it is the one I am demoting. Is there anything special about 2008 AD where certain information can only be stored on 2008 servers or is this just a AD database issue I need to resolve to get the forest back to only 2003 servers. Thanks.