How to troubleshoot and fix Active Directory replication issues on Windows Server 2012 R2

In this video I am going to show you an issue with my Active Directory replication between my two DCs and how I managed to resolve it. Tips and tricks for demoting a DC:

1. Always try graceful removal 1st, if you are not able to gracefully remove the DC proceed with Force Removal.

2. If you are performing a Forceful removal disconnect your DC in order to prevent corruption on your working DC.

3. Perform matadata cleanup from AD Users and Computers, DNS and AD Sites and Services when possible. If not you can proceed with ntdsutil /metadatacleanup.

4. After promotion leave the DCs to "talk" to each other in order to replicate all AD info.

[saadspl]

Hi, Nick i have seen almost every major topic video you created to counter check on our technique and get various thing to keep for us. Thus i found your video very helpful in terms of detail explanation regarding every topic you made for those who are in the filed IT & Acting as Admin somewhere to cope at their end on a quick way. Overall provided info, clear voice and step you created relevant to topic are quite good. Keep providing more tips & tricks. Thanks

[renegonzalez]

almost 5 years after you posted this video.... you have saved a life a and the job of this IT worker, jaja!! thanks a lot my friend, great video, all you did worked for me. I couldn´t demote gracefully, i had to forced it again and it finally got demoted. But besides that... all good!

[niyio]

O are a life saver..I have been going crazy for about 2 days trying to replicate to my DR. Thank

[markakdogan]

F*ck man! YOU just saved me tons of endless research on how to solve my issue. Thanks!!

[EduardoGarcia-dhvp]

for anyone facing this issue, usually it's caused by the loss of connectivity between PDC-ADC past the default tombstone attribute of 60 days.

[ekramy]

Hey,
thanks a lot for this great video, I have a question : why did you disabled the "Kerberos key distribution center" and restarted the DC in order to solve the demotion issue ? I mean this should do what ? or solve what exactly ?

[mwesigyerob]

Thanks so much for this video. It has helped me a lot to resolve conflicts between my two DCs

[souvikroy]

NLB perfect real time solution, Thanks its just perfect for me to understand.

[ahmedsh]

Thanks so much for this video. It has Save me

[Nyemaster]

Howdy - Very good procedure. It played very well into a domain controller issue I had. Thank You very much!

[KEYTRAP]

Hello, thank you for this great video I'm sure it will help many many people. You have my support !

[CK-zflh]

thanks for your reply.

Some one asked me in an interview replication is done on primary server or backup server? but couldn't answer it

[psyclptic]

Did you check your network location? Looks like it reverted to Private or public, rather than Domain network, changing firewall state.

[amitmisra]

thanks for clear and simple explanation

[jamespong]

When Microsoft says "Enterprise level" it means held together with bootstraps

[chilufyakabunda]

This video has been so helpful, Thank you so much !

[peravelli]

Thanks for the video and it's very useful and good explanation

[jaderade]

How long does it take for it to finish the replication? Mine has been stuck on "Creating the NTDS Settings object for this..." phase for quite some time now.

[threeforty]

Nice video and good info. What would be a use case for doing all these steps vs demoting and then starting with a fresh Windows Server installation? After all, if this machine had an AD/Kerberos problem once, something else deeper in the system could be corrupt. I would rather demote it as cleanly as possible and then join and promote a new server instance in its place. Should take all of 10 minutes in VMWare (minus Windows Update installation time)

[leehill]

great video, got me out of a sticky spot!