I have 3 Domain Controllers. We will call them DC1, DC2 and DC3. DC3 and DC2 show Event ID 13508 in their FRS logs with no follow-up event(13509 I think) to say the error had been fixed. DC1's FRS log no matter what you do never shows any events besides FRS service stopped and started.
DC1 holds the SYSVOL that needs to be replicated to the other DC's. The other DC's sysvol folders are empty.
I have tried the burflag method of fixing this but I haven't had any luck. My procedure for that was to stop all FRS services on all DC's. Then set the burflag on DC1 to D4 and the other two DCs burflag to D2. Started FRS on DC1 and the only event's I see in DC1's FRS event logs are service stopped and service started messages. This fact is leading me to believe that something is wrong on FRS for DC1. I believe there should be events 13553 and 13516 in the FRS event logs after an authoritative sysvol restore.
The other two DC's do not have anything in their SYSVOL, otherwise I would have made one of them the authoritative sysvol.
DC1 is MS Server 2003 Enterprise Edition SP2 DC2 is MS Server 2003 Standard Edition SP1 DC3 is MS Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition SP2
I did not setup this domain originally but I am now the administrator of it, so I don't have a lot of background on why certain things may have been done in the past.
My main goal is to try and fix these issues to get myself better prepared to decommision DC1 and add a DC running Server 2008 to my domain.
Thanks.
See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315457. Use the registry key to choose parent to seed from (ie.to seed from DC1).
You should run dcdiag on Dc1 to ensure the simple checks against the DC pass. I am expecting the netlogons and frssysvol tests to pass on DC1. If you suspect the attributes which store FRS config are not correct the "dcdiag /test:verifyreferences" can help.
Then FRS specific troubleshooting can be done using FRSDiag (available on MS download site). The http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2008/05/30/how-to-get-the-most-from-your-frsdiag.aspx link has useful detail on usage.
D4 of DC1 and then D2 of others is definitely the way I would go too. I am more interested in the lack of 13516 on DC1. Thats essential. For the others, you might consider force demotion using "dcpromo /forceremoval" and repromotion if you believe that would be quicker. Obviously it may be over kill as this is generally if D4/D2 fix. But if time is of essence ....
Finally I encourage you to apply SP2 where applicable.