Perform a system state backup of a working domain controller in the affected domain before demoting the DC. Forcibly Remove the Failed Domain Controller. If you cannot log onto the failed domain controller, you cannot demote it. Instead, we have to forcibly delete its object and all references to it. Once you decide to retire a Domain Controller, it is advised to use DC Promo to demote it which removes the NTDS Settings object. Due to any reason, if the demotion turns out to be unsuccessful, Active Directory will retain few objects of the DC which will cause errors. Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win2000.active_directory (I had a small network with a windows 2k domain controller. I added a Win2k server with Exchange 2k3 but after a few months, the hard drive started going To manually verify that the domain controller (DC) was successfully demoted: The steps described in this section, do not replace the official demote procedures described in the previous sections. The steps in this section are only to verify and to manually remove remaining entries, if the official demote process failed. Remove an Offline Domain Controller. you must either erase the server and reinstall Windows or perform a forced demotion of the domain controller. This completes the process to manually remove a domain controller from Active Directory by performing a metadata cleanup with NTDSUtil. Picking up the pieces after a failed domain controller demotion. By Brien Posey in Networking on March 21, 2002, 12:00 AM PST DCPROMO is supposed to make the task of demoting a domain controller In Windows Server 2008 and above, the dcpromo /forceremoval command can be run in Directory Services Restore Mode to demote a domain controller (DC) that will not start in normal mode, but in earlier versions of Windows, this is not an option. The following procedure enables a DC running Windows Server 2003 or Windows 2000 to be forcibly demoted if it will not start in normal mode. Recoveri