win server 03 nic works in safemode not in normal

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Gawd
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Mar 15, 2002
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I have a backup domain controller (one of three DCs) that suddenly stopped responding to network traffic. I cannot ping out from the box nor can the box itself be pinged however the NIC shows connected and that packets are being sent and received. I've swapped out the NIC with two other NICS with the same results. The really strange thing is that it can obtain a DHCP address.:confused:

Booting into safe mode works. I have full network access but boot up normally and the NIC stops working. Being that this box is a backup domain controller I really need to get this box working so I can dcpromo it out of the domain. I saw a 27 step article that shows how to manually remove a domain controller but I want to avoid doing that at all costs if I can. This domain controller has none of the roles applied to is and is not a GC. All the roles reside on the other two servers however this box is still a DC.

I have ran NOD32 on the box and it is clean. I used the little tool that repairs the ip stack and that didn't work either. Anyone ever seen this before and if so what did you do to fix the issue? Me and a college worked for four hours on this last night trying to get the damn thing to work with no success.
 
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Reinstall the NIC driver with a fresh copy? Pushing hardware updates via WSUS by any chance?
 
Yeolde- original nic was netfinity II on the IBM x series server. Not sure if it is Broadcom but I think it may be. I put in a PCI 3COM and that is what is in it now.

Spyder- I did try a reinstall of NIC divers and yes we are pushing updates via WSUS but not on this box. You think maybe it is a Win update causing the problem? I wanted to try a reinstall of SP2 but I ran into low disk space issue so I'll have to free up some space so I can rerun it. BTW this server has been running sub 100MB of free space for two years now. The server was scheduled to be decommissioned at the end of the month. I knew it would die before then........it was a gut feeling.
 
I'd get the latest drivers downloaded for the NIC from IBM/Lenovos website, then uninstall the NIC, clean out old drivers, reboot, install new drivers, reboot.

Note..if it's a DC...it will take a while to bootup when you're changing NIC drivers 'n don't have the NIC installed 'n setup with the proper DNS...but that's OK. Can be like up to 30 minutes.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
I'd get the latest drivers downloaded for the NIC from IBM/Lenovos website, then uninstall the NIC, clean out old drivers, reboot, install new drivers, reboot.

Note..if it's a DC...it will take a while to bootup when you're changing NIC drivers 'n don't have the NIC installed 'n setup with the proper DNS...but that's OK. Can be like up to 30 minutes.
Click to expand...

Will do. I'll post back with results on Monday.
 
Yeah nothing has worked. I tried reinstalling NIC drivers the first night and tried again today with several other things. Looks like I'll be manually removnig this one from the domain. I'll be following a few online articles to do this.

Anyone done this before and do you have any advice?
 
To finish up this thread I wanted to post what I did to resolve the issue.

First off the network connections on the server never did get fixed. Several hours was spent doing every kind of fix imaginable and still no luck.

I had to power down the server and then manually remove the server as a domain controller. I ran the ntdsutil utility by following this article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216498 . This removed the server 98% of the way however I did run into a permissions issue that left some remnants of the domain controller. If you went into the Users and Computers snap in you could still see the decommissioned domain controller and I got a access denied error when I would try to delete it.

To fix this issue I had to run adsiedit.msc and delete the replication subscription by giving the administrators account in question "special permissions" to that folder and then I was able to simply delete the decommissioned domain controller 100% of the way. Not really sure why these permissions were the way the are. I ran this same proceedure in a VMware environment to test with beforehand and I didn't have this problem. However the domain is working 100% the way it should so it doesn't seem to be an issue at all.

This method was a fairly painless procedure, however always take great care when using the above utilities because you can really mess things up if you are not careful.
 
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