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ThinkerIV
Asked: 2011-11-19 07:53:23 +0800 CST

Active Directory Corrupted In Windows Small Business Server 2011 - Server No Longer Domain Controller

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I have a rather bad problem with my Windows SBS 2011. First of all, I'll give the background to what caused the problem. I was setting up a new small business server network. I had my job about finished. The server was working great, all the workstations had joined the domain, and I had all my applications and data moved to the server. I thought I was done. But then it happened. I tried adding one more computer to the domain, and to my dismay the computer name was set to the same name as the server.

Apparently when a computer joins a domain with the same name as another machine that is already on the domain, it overrides the first one. For normal workstations, this is not a big deal, you just delete the computer from AD and rejoin the original computer to the domain. However, for a server that is the domain controller it is a whole different story. Since the server got overridden in AD, it is no longer the domain controller. The DNS service is not working and all kinds of other services are failing also.

So the question is, what are my options? I am embarrassed to admit it, but since this is a new server one thing I did not have setup yet was backup. So I have no backups to work from. I am worried that things are broken enough that I might need to do a reinstall. However, I already have several days worth of configuration into this server, so I would obviously prefer if there was a fix that would prevent me from needing to do a reinstall. All the server components are there and installed correctly, but they are misconfigured (I think it is basically just Active Directory). So I have the feeling that if I did the right thing I could solve the issue without a reinstall. Is there anyway to rerun the component that installs the initial configuration to "convert" the base windows server 2008 r2 install into a SBS? In other words in the program files folder there is an application called SBSsetup.exe, is there anyway to rerun this and have it reconfigure AD, etc. to work with SBS?

Any insight will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

domain-controller active-directory windows-server-2008-r2 windows-sbs-2011

1 Answers

  1. You have a DNS issue. You must have DNS running in order for AD to run. It is possible that the client registered its IP and broke things. (although for the life of me, I cannot believe AD would allow that)

    Try this - find the workstation's IP then shut it down. Add that IP to the NIC of the domain controller. This should allow the computer name to get associated with the right IP address.

    If it doesn't help, try uninstalling DNS and reinstalling. Once it is loaded run ipconfig /registerDNS on the DC to recreate the AD records

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