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Step-By-Step: Manually Removing A Domain Controller Server

AnthonyBartolo's avatar
AnthonyBartolo
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Nov 01, 2018
Use of DCPROMO is still the proper way to remove a DC server in an Active Directory infrastructure. Certain situations, such as server crash or failure of the DCPROMO option, require manual removal o...
Updated Dec 23, 2021
Version 5.0
Anthony Bartolo
Windows Server
anthonymaw's avatar
anthonymaw
Copper Contributor
Mar 11, 2021

Yes I confirm the observations of the respondents here:  After removing the server from ADUC and ADS&S the ntdsutil step is not needed.  It was probably from the Windows 2000/2003 days.

 

C:\Users\Administrator>ntdsutil
ntdsutil: metadata cleanup
metadata cleanup: remove selected server DC2
Binding to localhost ...
Connected to localhost using credentials of locally logged on user.
LDAP error 0x22(34 (Invalid DN Syntax).
Ldap extended error message is 0000208F: NameErr: DSID-031001F7, problem 2006 (BAD_NAME), data 8350, best match of:'CN=Ntds Settings,DC2'

Win32 error returned is 0x208f(The object name has bad syntax.)
)
Unable to determine the domain hosted by the Active Directory Domain Controller
(5). Please use the connection menu to specify it.
metadata cleanup: