Removal of domain's last 2003 DC

Question

Hi,
 I'm looking at removing the last 2003 DC in my domain. My setup is as follows:
1 forest with 2 domain. Parent domain "parent" has 2008 and 2003 DCs. Child domain "child" has 1 2003 DC and multiple 2008 DCs. There are multiple global catalogs and the 2003 DC does not hold any FSMO roles. The forest uses a centralized
DNS delegation with forest wide AD integrated zones. I've checked that my clients no longer use the 2003 DC for DNS referrals.
 Looking through the documentation here
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc776503(v=ws.10).aspx it mentions checking that the remaining 2003 DC isn't holding the last replica of an application partition and gives steps for checking this. I've ran the ntdsutil and connected to my 2003
DC and then ran the list nc information\list nc replica commands. I get 7 naming contexts returned:
Found 7 Naming Context(s)
0 - CN=Configuration,DC=parent,DC=com
1 - CN=Schema,CN=configuration,DC=com
2 - DC=child,DC=parent,DC=com
3 - DC=parent,DC=com
4 - DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=parent,DC=com
5 - DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=child,DC=parent,DC=com
6 - DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=parent,DC=com
When the list nc replica\info command is ran on my DCs in the child and parent domains for naming contexts 4 to 6 I see the replication partners listed as expected. However when I run the list command for contexts 0 to 3 I get no replicas found or "could
find no special info for this partition"
I'm not sure if this is normal and whether I need to do anything additional when demoting my 2003 DC in the child domain?

Answer 1

Hi Peter,
According to your description, it seems like that the
metadata
of Windows Server 2003 didn’t get cleaned up during demotion.
I suggest you try to cleanup server metadata by performing the following steps:
Open Command Prompt as an administrator on a DC in the child domain.
At the Command Prompt, type: ntdsutil,
and press Enter.
Next, type: metadata cleanup, then press Enter.
After that, type remove selected server <server name>.
In the Server Remove Configuration Dialog, review the information and warning, then click on
Yes.
Type quit, then press Enter.
After the above actions, please run
ntdsutil command again to confirm the results.
More information for you:
Clean Up Server Metadata
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc816907(v=WS.10).aspx
partition management
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc730970.aspx
Please feel free to let us know if the issue persists.
Best Regards,
Amy Wang