Windows 2000 Server Active Directory Issues

[dsavercool]

Hello,

I am running Windows 2000 Server with Active Directory and DHCP Services, this is our Primary Domain Controller. This Server has crashed on me several times in the past few months, and we have just restored the server from an old image (against my will) That continues to go bad every few months. I am trying to convince my system administrator that we need to start fresh and install Windows 2k Server on a new machine and be done with these reoccuring issues.

However, to do this I need to know the best way to migrate some of our data over to the new system. I have researched many places and have come across a few utilities for migrating DHCP over to a new system, this one looked the most promising. (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000...dhcpexim-o.asp)
I have also read a lot about Active directory and how you can backup and restore to a new machine, but a lot of the places that went into detail mentioned that you backup the registry. Which makes me feel uneasy being as I am not sure what is wrong with the current system. Then I have read about being able to setup a new Active Directory Server and having the users and security settings automatically replicating over to the new machine, causing no downtime.

Tomorrow is the day my administrator and I are going to simply reimage the old server with a backup from August, (which does not include 6 new hires that will now have to have their desktops reconfigured). If anyone can help I would be so grateful. Any reference links are amazing too.

You can contact me directly or post here, I will be reading this forum quite a bit today, you can count on that.

Thank you

-David Savercool

[NooNoo]

Microsoft have a whole suite of tools aimed at migration - but usually from 2k to 2k3 or similar.

The building of a new server then replicating from the old one is good. That way if it does go pearshaped, you still have the original server intact. Oh and welcome to Windrivers!

[rgharper]

If I may ... restoring images that old on an AD server is a really, really bad idea. Unless you have a backup of your current AD data and can restore it in AD recovery mode, you're just setting yourself up for another failure. Build a new server, get AD running on it, wait 24 hours for everything to stabilize, then transfer all services (DHCP, DNS, GC, all FSMO roles) from the old server to the new one and retire the old server. It's the only safe way to accomplish what you want.