I recently had a client come to me with an old server that is no longer in service that he wanted to clean up. As there was some data on the server that still needed to exist after the cleanup I could not simply rebuild the server from scratch. However this server was a Windows 2000 Domain Controller from a domain that no longer exists. I needed to remove Active Directory from the server but as the original domain could not be contacted any longer the standard DCPROMO command would fail.
To work around this issue you can run dcpromo with a command line option that will forcibly remove the server from the old domain and remove Active Directory.
First open up a command promt and run the following command:
dcpromo /forceremoval
When it finishes you will need to restart the server. It should now be free from the original domain and Active Directory should no longer be installed.
As usual this may not be the only way to solve the issue but "It Fixed It for Me"
For more of my "It Fixed it for me" articles please click here.Labels: command line, Itfixed it for me, Microsoft Windows