Tag Archives: Tips

Tips: Viewing and transferring the FSMO roles in the graphical user interface

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Transferring the Domain-Specific Roles: RID, PDC, and Infrastructure Master
In this article, let’s have a brief description about transferring the Domain-Specific Roles such as RID, PDC and Infrastructure Master. Go with the following procedure to transfer the roles.
1.    Open the Administrative Tools option from Start? Programs and then select “Active Directory Users and Computers.
2.    Now, click “Connect to Domain Controller” next to Active Directory Users and Computers. If you’re not on the domain controller where you want to transfer the role, it is required to take this step. Moreover, it isn’t necessary if you’re connected to the domain controller whose role you wish to transfer.
3.    Then, click the domain controller which will be the new role holder.
4.    After that click OK.
5.    Select Operations Masters by right clicking Active Directory Users and Computers.
6.    Now, it is required to click the appropriate tab (RID, PDC, or Infrastructure) for the role you want to transfer. You can select it from the Change Operations Master dialog box.
7.    In the Change Operations Master dialog box, click Change.
8.    Then, click OK to confirm that you wish to transfer the role.
9.    After that click OK and Cancel to close the dialog box.
Now, let’s have a discussion on transferring the Domain Naming Master role.
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Tips: How to verify the successful replication to a domain controller

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Repadmin.exe – a simple command that does more. Now, we’re going to discuss about using afore said command to verify the replication and format the command output using Microsoft Excel. Repadmin.exe can be run from the elevated command prompt on all the domain controllers running Windows Server 2008 or later.
Note: Using the repadmin.exe command to check the replication is one of the possible ways. However, we can also go with Active Directory Replication Status Tool (ADREPLSTATUS) to check replication status of domain controllers. It is a UI-based alternative solution and provides us the output in a similar format with significant improvements.
To check a successful replication to a specific domain controller, we can run repadmin /showrepl. If we don’t run repadmin on the domain controller whose replication we’re checking, it is required to specify a destination domain controller in the command. Repadmin is capable of listing INBOUND NEIGHBORS for the current or specified domain controller.
In INBOUND NEIGHBORS, you can view the distinguished name of each directory partition for which inbound directory replication has been attempted. Moreover, you can also view the site and the name of the source domain controller and check if the replication is succeeded as below.

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Tips: How to trace VSS, Exchange Writer, Replica Writer and use BETest tool

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Tracing the Volume Shadow Copy Service

In the last couple of articles, we’ve discussed about the Volume Shadow Copy service and troubleshooting it. If the issue is still unresolved even after performing those steps, it is required to create a batch file to set the registry entries. Click here for the links about VSS. You can copy and paste the following text to a text file and save it as “EnableVSSTracing.bat” as it will save the tracing information in a file that is known as C:\trace.txt.
net stop swprv
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Debug\Tracing /v TraceFile /t REG_SZ /d C:\trace.txt /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Debug\Tracing /v TraceLevel /t REG_DWORD /d 0xffffffff /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Debug\Tracing /v TraceEnterExit /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Debug\Tracing /v TraceToFile /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Debug\Tracing /v TraceToDebugger /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Debug\Tracing /v TraceFileLineInfo /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Debug\Tracing /v TraceForceFlush /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
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Tips: How to troubleshoot the Volume Shadow Copy Service

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The Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 Operating System is capable of addressing some issues that usually affect the performance of VSS. You can find VSS by default in Windows 2003. If a requester (a backup program) uses the writers in the system, it will automatically run as it is set to start normally.
Before the backup operation runs, make sure that the Exchange Writer is set to the stable state and there is no error. Use the following command to determine state of the Exchange Writer.

VSSadmin list writers
You can restart the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service if the Exchange Writer is in the failed state. Then, you can run the VSSadmin list writers command to determine if the writer state returns to a stable state. Let’s have an example output that explains the Exchange Writer in a stable state.
Writer name: ‘Microsoft Exchange Writer’
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Tips: How to enable the debug tracing features in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2008

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In the previous article, we had a brief discussion about troubleshooting the Event ID 12302 and the Error: 0x8000FFFF error messages that appear while running the vssadmin list writers. Now, let’s have another discussion about enabling the Volume Shadow Copy service’s debug tracing features in Microsoft Windows 2003 and 2008. Have a look at the following steps to do this.

1.    Click start and type “regedit” in the run box.
2.    Now, click OK to open the registry window.
3.    Then, it is required to navigate to the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS

 

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