Hi,

We have a DC which is at a remote office this location wasn't used for a
couple of years and wasn't able to sync. This DC has now disapeared (not
quite sure how) from sites and services at the head office. We need to get
this DC back up and running, but i cannot demote it using DCPROMO i get the
error:-

The operation failed because:
The Directory Service failed to replicate off changes made locally.
"The DSA object could not be found."

What is the next best course of action, remove AD via another method or try
and manually install the NTDS settings.

Thanks in advance

Hywel

HOW TO: Remove Orphaned Domains from Active Directory Without Demoting the
Domain Controllers:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=251307

--
Regards
Christoffer Andersson

No email replies please - reply in the newsgroup

"Hywel" skrev i meddelandet
news:MwE7c.269$Fm1.22@newsfe1-win...
> Hi,
>
> We have a DC which is at a remote office this location wasn't used for a
> couple of years and wasn't able to sync. This DC has now disapeared (not
> quite sure how) from sites and services at the head office. We need to get
> this DC back up and running, but i cannot demote it using DCPROMO i get
the
> error:-
>
> The operation failed because:
> The Directory Service failed to replicate off changes made locally.
> "The DSA object could not be found."
>
> What is the next best course of action, remove AD via another method or
try
> and manually install the NTDS settings.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Hywel
>
>

See if http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;216498 helps.

Hywel wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We have a DC which is at a remote office this location wasn't used
> for a couple of years and wasn't able to sync. This DC has now
> disapeared (not quite sure how) from sites and services at the head
> office. We need to get this DC back up and running, but i cannot
> demote it using DCPROMO i get the error:-
>
> The operation failed because:
> The Directory Service failed to replicate off changes made locally.
> "The DSA object could not be found."
>
> What is the next best course of action, remove AD via another method
> or try and manually install the NTDS settings.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Hywel

You can use the /forceremoval switch with dcpromo in this case. This will
rip AD from the DC and you can then do the metadata cleanup process from the
216498 article provided by Lanwench. Once these are both done you can
re-promote the server.
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=332199

"Hywel" wrote in message
news:MwE7c.269$Fm1.22@newsfe1-win...
> Hi,
>
> We have a DC which is at a remote office this location wasn't used for a
> couple of years and wasn't able to sync. This DC has now disapeared (not
> quite sure how) from sites and services at the head office. We need to get
> this DC back up and running, but i cannot demote it using DCPROMO i get
the
> error:-
>
> The operation failed because:
> The Directory Service failed to replicate off changes made locally.
> "The DSA object could not be found."
>
> What is the next best course of action, remove AD via another method or
try
> and manually install the NTDS settings.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Hywel
>
>

"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"
wrote in message
news:ut2WsEDEEHA.2804@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> See if http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;216498 helps.
>
> Hywel wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > We have a DC which is at a remote office this location wasn't used
> > for a couple of years and wasn't able to sync. This DC has now
> > disapeared (not quite sure how) from sites and services at the head
> > office. We need to get this DC back up and running, but i cannot
> > demote it using DCPROMO i get the error:-
> >
> > The operation failed because:
> > The Directory Service failed to replicate off changes made locally.
> > "The DSA object could not be found."
> >
> > What is the next best course of action, remove AD via another method
> > or try and manually install the NTDS settings.
> >
> > Thanks in advance
> >
> > Hywel


Thanks for the reply

i am getting the following error message

"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"
wrote in message
news:ut2WsEDEEHA.2804@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> See if http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;216498 helps.
>
> Hywel wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > We have a DC which is at a remote office this location wasn't used
> > for a couple of years and wasn't able to sync. This DC has now
> > disapeared (not quite sure how) from sites and services at the head
> > office. We need to get this DC back up and running, but i cannot
> > demote it using DCPROMO i get the error:-
> >
> > The operation failed because:
> > The Directory Service failed to replicate off changes made locally.
> > "The DSA object could not be found."
> >
> > What is the next best course of action, remove AD via another method
> > or try and manually install the NTDS settings.
> >
> > Thanks in advance
> >
> > Hywel
>

oops don't know how i sent that last message..

Got over the problem with DCPROMO /forceremoval

and now its removed it completly from the domain even though it said it was
going to make it a member server