IT Knowledge Base

So if you can’t recover the Primary Domain Controller then you have no other choice than making a member DC to a PDC. You can seize the roles with ntdsutil.

Run command prompt with domain admin rights:
1. ntdsutil
2. roles
3. connections
4. connect to server MyMemberDC
5. q
6. Seize domain naming master
7. Seize PDC
8. Seize RID master
9. Seize schema master
10. q q
11. dsa.msc

* We don’t seize Infrastructure Master because it should be on another DC where the Global Catalog isn’t installed.
* You can get help in ntdsutil anytime if you just write help and press enter

dcgpofix /target:both

netdom query FSMO

—

PDC
dsquery server -hasfsmo pdc

RID Master
dsquery server -hasfsmo rid

Infrastructure Master
dsquery server -hasfsmo infr

Schema Master
dsquery server -hasfsmo schema

Domain Naming Master
dsquery server -hasfsmo name

Today I restored my Exchange Server and virtual Domain Controller but couldn’t get it working because our main Domain Controller wasn’t arround.
To make the second Domain Controller work just set the following setting in the registry and restart the Domain Controller. You might also need to restart all other servers.