Moving SBS Between Domains

Today I was finishing up with the task of installing a server at a customer. This SBS 2003 server had previously been a domain controller (in fact, the first domain controller) in a domain. Now, it’s a domain controller in a completely different domain.

First, I had to demote it. That wasn’t difficult. Next, I had to join it to the new domain. Again, not difficult. But then things just started to go a bit wacky. I’ve now done most of the reloading of the server, which in itself isn’t a big deal, but it was all done remotely, which made it a bit more challenging.

The first error to tackle was to get rid of the annoying Network Load Balancing Service failed to start message. Mostly an issue because I was not using Network Load Balancing! The process was not too bad, really. I just need to delete a couple of registry keys: HKLM\System\Current Control Set\Services\Eventlog\System\WLBS and HKLM\System\Current Control Set\Services\WLBS.

Second, I needed to move the DHCP database from one server to another. You wouldn’t think that moving from Windows 2000 to Windows 2003 would be difficult. And it’s all laid out. But it didn’t work all that well. I ended up exporting the configuration from the Windows 2000 server:

  netsh dhcp dump > dhcp.txt

And then importing it into the Windows 2003 server:

  netsh exec dhcp.txt

This actually went really well. But first – the source server should not be currently running (stop the DHCP server service). The destination server should be running. Also, if the IP address or paths are different, make sure you change them before trying the import. Otherwise, it just won’t work. Afterwards, I just restarted the computer. I’m not sure if that was necessary, but it didn’t hurt anything.

Next, I needed to manually remove a snap-in from the Computer Management MMC. Again I visited the registry, this time locating the specific snap-in in the key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MMC\SnapIns. The snap-ins are listed by GUID, so search for the text you need, or just scroll through the list. Once it was gone, I received no more MMC errors about having problems loading the snap-in that couldn’t be found.

In this particular case, this will be the primary domain controller, as the old one is dying. So I also transferred the FSMO roles to this server. The old server was still online, so I used the GUI method, which made things pretty easy. But seizing them isn’t too bad either. I didn’t use that technique here, but I have done it previously.

Finally, I did quite a bit of work with Exchange on the server. I would assume that this is because the Exchange system is pretty tightly integrated with Active Directory – and also because the new network didn’t have the AD changes necessary. Finally, I manually removed the whole thing completely. It involved a lot of registry twiddling, so it’s probably not for the faint-of-heart. But it worked well. And once it was gone, I just reloaded it from the install CD. Voilá!