Hello, I have been having some problems with our Win2003 server. Let me give some background first. This year I migrated our company data from a win2000 box to the win2003. I promoted the win2003 to the PDC, setup DNS, and AD. AD replicated properly between the servers. I noticed a problem last week when the win2000 was powered down. If a user turned on their pc and entered their acct password it took 4-5 min for the pc to fully boot up. When the win2000 box is powered up the logon process is normal. On the win2003 server if I go to Start\Programs\Administrative Tools\Domain Controller Security Policy I receive this msg. "Failed to open the Group Policy Object. You may not have appropriate rights" In the Application Event Viewer the following entry was there from this morning. "Security Policy in the Group policy objects has been applied succesfully" Could someone please point me in the right direction? I fixed a DNS issue that I had last week, but don't know what to do to fix this. Thanks, malaize

I promoted the win2003 to the PDC You don't promote a 2000/2003 domain controller (DC) to "pdc" or "bdc". PDC/BDC are NT 4.0 (and earlier) and do not apply to an Active Directory environment unless you're talking about the PDC FSMO role which is entirely different from an NT 4.0 PDC. If a user turned on their pc and entered their acct password it took 4-5 min for the pc to fully boot up. When the win2000 box is powered up the logon process is normal. It sounds to me like the users are still trying to authenticate to the 2000 DC first. Make sure the DNS address on all clients points at the new 2003 DC. On the win2003 server if I go to Start\Programs\Administrative Tools\Domain Controller Security Policy I receive this msg. "Failed to open the Group Policy Object. You may not have appropriate rights" I would start by researching that issue on MS's knowledge base.

Hi Curt R and thanks for the reply. Sorry about the PDC comment. I set up AD on the win2003 server and then transferred the FSMO roles from the win2000 server. In regards to the Group Policy message I searched the MS knowledge base and found this article. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832... I followed the directions at the command line, but when I issued the commands a Group Policy error dialog opened saying "Failed to open the Group Policy Object. You may not have appropriate rights" malaize

Is there a command I can run to make sure that the win2003 server is in fact the PDC and that the win2000 server is the SDC? I have checked DNS and everything points to the IP of the win2003 server. Thanks, malaize