How to remove a failed server from DFS in Windows Server 2003 R2

re: How to remove a failed server from DFS in Windows Server 2003 R2

Brandon — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:31:43 GMT

I too have had a simular problem, in trying your solution I receive the following:

dfsutil /UnmapFtRoot /Root:\\domain.local\namespace /Server:deadserver /Share:(Share to be removed) reports system error 1169 "There was no match for the specified key in the index"

Anyone else seen this error, I can't find any inforamation on it.

Thanks

re: How to remove a failed server from DFS in Windows Server 2003 R2

Sebastian — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:23:16 GMT

Thanks for sharing.

I was unsuccesfully trying to remove a root target DC after it was demoted without first removing the DC from the root targets.

Found out by reading your post that the /share parameter of dfsutil /unmapftroot should be the name of the share and not \\servername\share as it is listed in the Help and Support Center and the TechNet website and other places.

re: How to remove a failed server from DFS in Windows Server 2003 R2

Roger Lipscombe — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:49:13 GMT

I had this problem -- I retired the domain controller that was hosting my DFS namespaces, and didn't move them across.

In the end, I had to use ADSI Edit to delete the namespaces (under ..., CN=System, CN=Dfs-Configuration).

Then I had to flush the caches, using

dfsutil cache domain flush

dfsutil cache referral flush

...then I could recreate the namespaces.

re: How to remove a failed server from DFS in Windows Server 2003 R2

Grant — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:07:00 GMT

Thanks for the info. I used this to kill a namespace that had it's server disappear.

re: How to remove a failed server from DFS in Windows Server 2003 R2

David Sutherland — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:36:43 GMT

The irony here is that I get the same error message from the command line that was the original problem:

C:\Users\administrator.CBR>dfsutil /root:\\adam-old\dfs /view

Could not execute the command successfully

SYSTEM ERROR - The RPC server is unavailable.

re: How to remove a failed server from DFS in Windows Server 2003 R2

Lightspeed — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 02:47:58 GMT

Wow sounds like a bit of a disaster there. Did you have backups, or did you lose everything that was on that machine?

And I agree, BartPE would have been useful.

re: How to remove a failed server from DFS in Windows Server 2003 R2

Lindley — Tue, 23 May 2006 00:33:47 GMT

John, sorry to hear your dilemma. I think in the future you ought to have WinPE on hand. I actually use BartPE; much better. I have the Windows 2003 I386 / BartPE source files staged on a machine and when I need to create a custom Windows 2003 boot disk (WinPE) with certain drivers, I just add what I need, create CD, and boot the troubled machine. This saves ton of time versus installing a parallel OS install. I actually create / integrated a custom BartPE CD with over 30 RAID / SATA / NIC drivers for this type of reason. You may also include your tools for diagnosis in this CD - instead of hours or even days, troubleshooting - it would have been just minutes. By the way, its also great for RIS tools and VS migration (P2V). Just a thought...good luck.