Sysvol not replicating, AD not failing over

I have put in a new Domain Controller (newDC) into our network but are having problems with the old Domain Controller (oldDC) replicating sysvol to newDC. The ultimate goal that I'm trying to achieve here is to be able to shut down oldDC and have newDC take over (eventually having oldDC only as a backup).

As of right now, the issue lies when I shut down oldDC I start to run into problems with the active directory (such as not being able to edit any users info, it just hangs for a few seconds as if it's still trying to talk to oldDC).

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Event Viewer Logs:
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On newDC, I only get two errors (but I think the problem lies in oldFS's logs, please read oldFS logs before making suggestions).

1) EventID 13566. File Replication Service is scanning the data in the system volume. Computer "newDC" cannot become a domain controller until this process is complete. The system volume will then be shared as SYSVOL.

2) EventID 13508. The File Replication Service is having trouble enabling replication from "oldFS" to "newFS" for c:\windows\sysvol\domain using the DNS oldFS.domain. FRS will keep retrying. (one of the possible causes is listed as "FRS is not running on oldFS. The DNS settings appear to be okay).

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oldDC logs:

1) EventID 13552. The File Replication Service is unable to add this computer to the following replica set:
"DOMAIN SYSTEM VOLUME (SYSVOL SHARE) ".
This coule be caused by a number of problems such as: invalid root path (the root path is correct, i've checked), missing directory, missing disk volume, file sysem on the volume that does not support NTFS 5.0 (not the case). FRS error status code is FrsErrorMismatchedJournalId (could be the problem?).

2) EventID 13555. The FRS is in an error state. Files will not replicate to or from one or all of the replica sets on this computer.

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Further Details:
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For the active directory settings, if I set the PDC operations master to newDC, the active directory begins to give problems (like not being able to map user home dirs for example-- but this makes sense since the problem lies with sysvol not replicating over).

Microsoft support archives tell me to restore the SYSVOL data from a domain controller that can replicate files to the domain controller that cannot (in non-authoritative mode). Problem with this is that newDC doesn't have an up to date copy of the sysvol since replication never succeeded.

I'm kind of stumped on this one, been trying to resolve it for a few days without much luck. Any help would be extremely appreciated!

 

I just solved my problem, it seems that the problem was with a correupted SYSVOL replica set.

I followed some steps from "How to rebuild the SYSVOL tree and its contents ": http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315457/

I shut down ntfrs service on both DC's, did an authoritative restore on the oldDC (D4), a non-authoritative restore on newDC (D2), then started the ntfrs service back up and all went smooth... was relieved to see all those red x's dissapear from the event viewer

Going to do a reboot of the DC's later tonight and do a failover test to see if newDC can maintain the AD without oldDC now that it's replicating properly. Stay tuned for more troubleshooting if all goes to hell.

 

Thank you for posting back your solution. Good to hear you are getting on top of the problem.