Hello All Here is the situation which is presently under way in my firm... My PDC SCSI hard disk crashed and was unable to come up.So BDC was available and the network was working fine and users were able to log on to network and access resources.But at that time in BDC I was unable to find User accounts in User Manager in BDC !!(the BDC wasnt promoted to PDC) but users were able to log on to network with the same usernames/passwords which were existing before PDC crash.Now when PDC was replaced with new SCSI hard disk and fresh installation of PDC with Windows NT4.0 SP5 was made.And now in new PDC no User accounts are visible nor in BDC !! but still the users able to log on to network with same usernames/passwords which were created previously.And also when users are trying to connect to the new PDC,the PDC is asking for a username/password to access,it is not taking the existing username/password !! I tried synchronozation of both servers also.but no result. So kindly help me out from this situation

If you lose a PDC you CANNOT rebuild a server and introduce as the PDC. What you must do is:- 1. PDC is lost, therefore Promote the BDC 2. repair old PDC machine and rebuild NT4 and introduce to the network as a BDC. 3. When all systems look ok, closedown the 'old' BDC which is currently acting as the PDC. 4. Promote the original server back as PDC. 5. reboot the other server. When it comes up it will recognise that there is already a PDC on the LAN and it, too, is a PDC at which point you can demote it back to being a BDC. 6. Check that replication services are working correctly *remember to alter the startuo of Directory Replicator to use the Admin account.

thanks maurice but i tried to promote the BDC to PDC but that option was grayed out in Server manager in BDC.So installed NT on PDC and recreated all user accounts now.NOw the prob is when I'm trying to connect to BDC it asking for network username/password but already I'm logged onto domain.What to do?

Do I take it that you rebuilt the PDC and re-installed NT4 on it and selected it to be a PDC again? If so I would say that the BDC needs to be taken out of the network and re-introduced as a BDC. The PDC doesn't appear to recognise the BDC as being a BDC as the SIDs will have changed, it probably sees it just as another computer on the LAN. I think the only way to get the BDC back as a BDC is to install NT4 as new on it and tell it to be a BDC in the domain and the PDC should then record it as such. There is no other way to tell the PDC to accept it.

Just a couple of comments. There is a common misconception that when a pdc goes down that the/a bdc will automaticly become a pdc. You have to manually promote a bdc to pdc in server manager. Next item is that you do not have to take any server off line to do a promotion. Just go to the bdc and promote to pdc. The pdc will automaticly demote itself to a bdc. I suspect your present bdc can not be promoted because it sees another domain with the same name on the wire. At this point a reinstall of the bdc as a bdc into the new domain would be the easiest to do. Otherwise you should be able to take the newly built pdc off the network, reboot the bdc so it gets a new server list and then promote it to pdc. Otherwise you have other issues with your bdc that you might want to resolve before the next crisis.

Hello thank you for your valuable comments.I'll surely try this out,taking out my BDC and reintroduce it in domain(but without reinstalling NT on it !!).And also can u suggest me how to take my domain User accounts for backup on hard disk or CD ROM.

Hello Folks The problem was solved.I just deleted my BDC account from Server manager and again added the same BDC to the domain.And after that made Synchronization of accounts with BDC and PDC !! thats it now the BDC is accepting the same usernames/apssowrd which are used for domain. So thank you Maurice.Without REINSTALLING a new copy of O/S the job was done.