Hi, My small business server 2000 crashed. I have a second Win server 2000 running as a backup domain controller. I believe I have to seize some of the services and have them running on the win 2000 server before I can add users and such. My plan was to make the Win 2K server the PDC and then install the SBS as a BDC. I understand that a SBS has to come up as a PDC. How would you suggest that I get this SBS back on the network after a new re-install? Most of the Cals were purchased for the SBS. I really don't want to buy the cals for the W2K server too. Any ideas? Thanks heaps Msemi

As far as I know you can only have one DC if you are running SBS and configure a second DC is not an option. You may want to ask some other people but I beleive this to be true. Steven

Yes I believe you are right SBS is a one server solution and it is kind of illegal to add other servers to that environment. So a complete reinstall or a disaster recover from backup is you only option Deli

Im not going to bring the SBS back up. I have a Windows 2K server on the network that is a DC. I have all the Admin tool available on the server, however, for example, if I try to add a user the following message is displayed: Windows cannot validate the uniqueness of this proposed user name with a global catalog server because: The server is not operational. Win will create this user account but the user can log on only after the user name is verified to be unique. I believe I need to seize the FSMO roles Is the server operating system able to add these roles to itself? Will this enable a GC server for me? I guess this has to be done quite a bit if the PDC goes down Thanks heaps

Yes you need to seize roles and make your DC a GC (this is not an automatic process) documentation how to do that is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/255504 This is not really the way to proceed as you don't want to restore your server. You might aswell start from scratch because you allready lost everything Deli

Thanks for your replies. I don't really understand - isn't the purpose of a backup DC used if the PDC goes down. If I can add users and do admin tasks to the DC promoted to PDC - that's all I really need. There was just some data on the server but I can restore that. I would have to add a DNSfunction too. I should be able to add that as well. I'm not runningExchange or anything else... Can I actually add a new W2K server as a PDC then import the current active dir. information from the existing DC to it so that I don't have to re-add everything? Thanks - I'm just trying to get a clear picture..

Hi - I was doing some reading...the actual error that I am receiving is: Windows cannot validate teh uniqueness of this proposed user name with a global catalog server because: The server is not operational. windows will create this user account, but the user can log on only after the user name is verified to be unique. I received this when trying to add a new user. Can I not just add the Dc as a GC? Do I have to seize the 5 services first? I wonder if it will ask me to reboot the server? What I really want to do is just make this DC my PDC then add another DC later... Thanks very much

OK, what you want is possible You should seize all the roles first and then enable the current PDC as GC You can offcourse add another DC later and it will replicate with your current PDC and take all information about the domain that is on the PDC. Deli

Great! Thanks for getting back to me so soon...I just hope that there isn't any problems seizing the roles because I was using SBS. I have a feeling that I will have to reboot the server after seizing the roles and creating a GC...without a DNS server - after a reboot, I'll probably have a problem with clients trying to connect and authenicate. Do you think I should add a DNS server before the other tasks. Thanks again.

You can Add a DNS server at any time. You do need to configure your sever to point to itself as the new DNS server in Client IP settings and point all clients to the new DNS server You probably need to run ipconfig /registerdns to configure the dns settings for the DC Seizing does not require any reboot neither does making a GC Deli