Question : Server 2003 demoting PDC and Primary DNS.

Hi all, I have recently had my primary domain controller start dying on me. I have already moved all FSMO roles successfully to the secondary DC.

I want to take the PDC offline for a rebuild and just want to check a couple of things first if you would be so kind - to ensure I dont break anything in the process :)

The PDC is also the Primary target in my DFS replication both within the local and remote site heirarchy of my network. It is also the Primary DNS Server within my domain. What would be the best method of ensuring that DNS and DFS is not affected in the rebuild and demotion of this DC.

My plan is to simply remove the server from DFS replication until it is back online which should be fine, within DNS would I need to do anything specific other than ensure all clients are now looking to my secondary DNS server as their Primary? DNS is AD Integrated. I would obviously be demoting the server using DCPROMO and then removing it off the domain altogether prior to rebuild so everytihg should hopefully occur gracefully.

I know this seems like a strange query - but I havent done this for a while and want to make sure I havent forgotten anything. Many thanks for your time.

Answer : Server 2003 demoting PDC and Primary DNS.

Make sure that it dosent hold any GC roles, u can perform this action through dcpromo or dcpromo/forceremoval
also delete the old entry from dns console, and remove the failed dc by using ntdsutil