Changing a Domain Controlers Name???

I work with a non-profit company who has 2 NT 4 servers. I'm in the process of replacing them with Win 2K servers. I have one that I loaded Nt4 on and joined the domain, then became the PDC, then upgraded to 2k. That allowed me to keep all the users and groups. My question is how can I (after copying all from the folders and shares from the OD NT server) rename the 2K PDC. I know microsoft says you can't do this, but I ran regedit and renamed it and almost everything worked. Had a problem with the group policy, and domain security.

 

The best way to do this would have been to simply Demote the NT4 box to bdc then upgrade to member server then you run DCPROMO.EXE and away you go with your new W2K DC.
Try Demoting the new W2K box to a member server and then re promoting it and you should have no problems with it

oh yeah and in W2k there is no PDC or BDC just DC's and perhaps this is part of the problem
hope it helps some

 

VoodoU's reply is pretty much correct except that he misses out the important Caveat that the other box must be upgraded to a 2K DC first otherwise when you run DCPromo and remove AD on the first box you're going to lose all of the users and groups that you've tried so hard to keep

 

well sometimes ya miss but hope it solves yer problem and thanks andy!

 

The other server is at a different location. And it can see the 2000 server but because of DNS problems (I think) it can't join the domain. I used our e-mail servers DNS name, but need to transfer the mail to the new server and change IP addresses before the new server will really be able to control the DNS name.

Thanks for the help on changing the names, thats what I thought would work, but Microsoft's official position is that you can not change the name.