53 Comments to "How to rename a Windows Server 2008 domain"

1. JC wrote:

   Thanks for the long-to-short on this.
   Worked great!

   Link | September 29th, 2008 at 9:38 am

2. J Wynn wrote:

   Thank you. You save my day.

   Link | June 2nd, 2009 at 7:17 am

3. Robot-Scott wrote:

   just an fyi, the technet website says that only a 2003 forest and domain level is needed to perform the renaming, not 2008… http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc816631(WS.10).aspx

   Link | June 30th, 2009 at 5:48 pm

4. Rick wrote:

   Hi Scott,

   08 mode is not a requirement but in my example shown, I actually renamed a Windows Server 2008 domain which for the FFL/DFL had to be 08 native. If it was not, I would then just be talking about renaming a Windows Server 2003 domain and having an one-off 08 DC in that domain.

   Link | July 1st, 2009 at 8:01 pm

5. Sheriff wrote:

   Hi Sheikh, Thanks a lot you saved me a lot of trouble. It worked perfectly. My server warned me and rebooted before I could enter the “rendom /clean” command but I run it after restarting and logging in. Sallam.

   Link | July 28th, 2009 at 9:03 am

6. anonymous wrote:

   this is what im looking for, thank you
   its a shame that there’s not enough resource on the Web regarding on how to use rendom.exe

   Link | September 14th, 2009 at 1:21 am

7. hafiz wrote:

   Thanks. Its a wonderful contribution.

   Link | December 7th, 2009 at 2:16 pm

8. Vlad (Small Business Blog) wrote:

   Thank you, you just saved me two hours of aggravation and probably same thing tomorrow

   I would just say that instead of examples on gpfixup utility (or, rather, in addition to them) I would’ve added the explanation from the document you have linked to. Namely the following passage:

   gpfixup /olddns:OldDomainDnsName
   /newdns:NewDomainDNSName
   /oldnb:OldDomainNetBIOSName
   /newnb:NewDomainNetBIOSName
   /dc:DcDnsName 2>&1 >gpfixup.log
   -Where-
   OldDomainDnsName is the old DNS name of the renamed domain.
   NewDomainDnsName is the new DNS name of the renamed domain.
   OldDomainNetBIOSName is the old NetBIOS name of the renamed domain.
   NewDomainNetBIOSName is the new NetBIOS name of the renamed domain.
   DcDnsName is the DNS host name of a domain controller in the renamed domain, preferably the PDC emulator, that successfully completed the rename operation with a final Done state in the dclist.xml state file in “STEP 8: Execute Domain Rename Instructions” earlier in this document.

   Link | January 15th, 2010 at 9:53 pm

9. Qazi Ehteshamuddin wrote:

   Thank you ,
   Very simple and helpful , worked well for me.

   Link | January 29th, 2010 at 9:50 pm

10. Venkatesh wrote:

    Thank you for your above step is worked for me..

    Link | March 31st, 2010 at 12:52 am

11. VIJim wrote:

    The Microsoft documentation on rendom says to run rendom.exe on a control computer, a computer conected to the domain. Do not use a domain controller to act as the control station for the domain rename operation.

    What’s your exerience?

    Link | May 15th, 2010 at 11:28 am

12. Mohammed Abid wrote:

    simple and great,keep going. when i change from old domain name to new still im able to find the old domain in account properties like user@olddomain.com and even new user@newdomain.local.

    can you put your inputs regardint this

    Link | May 17th, 2010 at 3:53 am

13. Greg wrote:

    GREAT!!! VERY HELPFUL!!!!

    Link | May 19th, 2010 at 8:57 pm

14. OtherKevin wrote:

    One thing that you might want to add…you need to make sure that the DNS zone for the new DNS domain name exists BEFORE you begin mucking around with RENDOM. If it doesn’t then RENDOM will not be able to create the required DomainDnsZones and ForesDnsZones entries in DNS.

    Link | June 14th, 2010 at 12:13 pm

15. Marios wrote:

    Guys what is the difference between .local and .com ?

    Link | June 16th, 2010 at 6:57 am

16. Rick wrote:

    See this discussion. http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Server_Software/Q_23280872.html

    Basically, when using a public TLD you just have to take into consideration of the public DNS namespace usage and the possible need to use the split brain DNS to avoid the name resolution confusion.

    Link | June 23rd, 2010 at 3:17 pm

17. jason wrote:

    Great post! Thank you. I had read the unabridged material on this subject and can appreciate this work very much.

    Link | July 15th, 2010 at 2:31 pm

18. Arun Kumar Arjunan wrote:

    Thanks. Worked perfectly..

    Link | September 29th, 2010 at 12:05 am

19. Rename Domain in Windows Server 2008 « Nishant Rana's Weblog wrote:

    [...] http://www.shariqsheikh.com/blog/index.php/200804/how-to-rename-a-windows-server-2008-domain/ [...]

    Link | November 15th, 2010 at 3:17 am

20. Roshan wrote:

    Any ideas about rename xyz => xyz.local
    2 dc (2003 and 2008)

    Link | December 7th, 2010 at 8:12 pm

21. Rick wrote:

    Hi Roshan, I have not tried renaming a SLD. You may test it in a sandbox environment.

    Link | December 13th, 2010 at 3:18 pm

22. mirza wrote:

    thx man. great article

    Link | December 17th, 2010 at 2:47 am

23. Alex wrote:

    Great stuff!

    Link | December 30th, 2010 at 2:48 pm

24. Shah Murad wrote:

    Hi Shariq,
    Great article! Easy to follow and so far, things are looking great with the newly named domain.
    Thanks for the tip.
    Regards
    Shah

    Link | January 19th, 2011 at 6:03 pm

25. Ahmed wrote:

    Dear Friends,
    thanks for reading my post.

    I have setup a network with Windows 2008 R2 and mistakenly given my public domain name which is mydomain.com , everything is running fine, clients can login and group policy is being applied to all. But now if I open an internet page and type http://www.mydomain.com it gives me a blank page.

    I have noticed this after months. Is there anything I can do to rectify this?

    I have tried to run this command to rename the domain name windir%\system32\rendom.exe a black screen flashes and disappears.

    Could you please advise me how to rectify my mistake so I can browse to my website online or if I must rename the fqdn then please advise how to run random.exe tool somehow because if I runt it now it just flashes a black screen.

    Thank you in advance

    Ahmed

    Link | March 4th, 2011 at 5:11 pm

26. Rick wrote:

    Hi Ahmed, A domain rename is not necessarily a solution in your case. Take a look at “split brain DNS” setup http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms954396.aspx.

    Link | March 7th, 2011 at 10:16 pm

27. Venkatraman S wrote:

    Thank you for your above step is worked………….

    Link | March 30th, 2011 at 4:26 am

28. Emilio Mansur wrote:

    Hi there!

    Thanks for the simple explanation.
    I have a question… do I have to rebot all my clients if I change only the NetBIOS name?

    Link | April 4th, 2011 at 3:00 am

29. Rick wrote:

    Hi Emilio. I believe you do. Thanks,

    Link | April 11th, 2011 at 3:13 pm

30. ranjeet wrote:

    hi ,
    i want to change my domain name .com to .edu . can you tell me how to change .

    THANKS
    Ranjeet

    Link | April 28th, 2011 at 11:47 pm

31. Geryatric wrote:

    I need to do this on a SBS2008 server (running Exchange 2007)
    The rendom.exe is included with the SBS install.

    Has anyone sucessfully renamed a SBS2008 domain or a domain with Exchange installed?

    Link | May 1st, 2011 at 10:45 pm

32. Geryatric wrote:

    To claify my post above – I only need to change the NETBIOS domain name. The FQDN name is correct.
    FQDN: company.com
    NETBIOS domain name: copany

    Looks pretty straight forward to change with RENDOM but I can’t find any posts regarding Exchange Server / SBS

    Link | May 2nd, 2011 at 7:56 pm

33. Mark H wrote:

    Very useful article, however in my organisation our forest is Windows 2008 functional level but we have an Exchange 2003 server in our organisation I haven’t found a definitive guide that shows the process for the Exchange part. When I have run the XDR-Fixup it gives Operation Failed errors.

    Also if I am renaming a Windows 2008 domain from example.com to example.local do I need a control station?

    Link | May 4th, 2011 at 2:25 am

34. Q wrote:

    This DID NOT WORK and I cannot log into my domain controller now.

    Link | May 18th, 2011 at 3:06 pm

35. Andrea wrote:

    It didn’t work for me…

    When I try the RENDOM /UPLOAD it tells me:
    Impossible to upload ALIAS in DNS root for distinct name: CN=e312e2aa-508e-41
    00002098: SecErr: DSID-03150E8A, problem with 4003 (INSUFF_ACCESS_RIGHTS)

    Insufficent access right??
    I’m using the only Administrator configured on the machine….

    Any idea?
    Thanks,
    Andrea

    Link | June 3rd, 2011 at 4:12 am

36. narayan wrote:

    thank you sir

    Link | June 16th, 2011 at 1:47 am

37. narayan dasar wrote:

    Thanks for the
    explanation.

    Link | June 16th, 2011 at 1:49 am

38. Yasin EVRENKAYA & IT Specialist ! » Windows Server (2003 -2008) Change Domain Name wrote:

    [...] http://www.shariqsheikh.com/blog/index.php/200804/how-to-rename-a-windows-server-2008-domain/ [...]

    Link | June 17th, 2011 at 3:41 pm

39. Papi wrote:

    I can’t logon after doing the instructions except that i failed to do the gpfixup. lol.

    Link | June 18th, 2011 at 8:51 am

40. Papi wrote:

    I got in lol. I had to change my domain in the user logon process. will do more fixin…

    Link | June 18th, 2011 at 8:54 am

41. BriData 数据仓库/商务智能技术 Blog » 如何修改 Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain Name wrote:

    [...] http://www.shariqsheikh.com/blog/index.php/200804/how-to-rename-a-windows-server-2008-domain/ 分类: 其他 评论 (0) Trackbacks (0) 发表评论 Trackback [...]

    Link | June 25th, 2011 at 8:33 am

42. Mark Bazemore wrote:

    This is the most straight forward method of renaming a Domain Server I have found. It is a pleasure to see someone put a logical sequence in order and concise. Thanks!

    Link | July 16th, 2011 at 1:04 pm

43. Brian wrote:

    Can you use a Windows 7 machine as the “Control Station” ?
    If not, what happens if you run RenDom on the PDC?

    I am trying to rename a domain on a PDC for a new domain that is not yet in production – but there has been extensive configuration and license activations, so I don’t want to do a complete reinstall…

    Link | July 25th, 2011 at 3:04 pm

44. Sat wrote:

    Hi, Fantastic instructions but I’ve ran into problems.
    I’m trying to rename our school domain, I have one server and everything went well until I ran:
    repadmin /syncall /d /e /P /q DcDnsName NewDomainDN

    I keep getting the following error:

    DsBindWithCred to h-server.hollybrook.local failed with status 1722 (0x6ba):
    The RPC server is unavailable.

    I seem to be stuck at this point and cannot proceed any further.

    Thanks in advance
    Sat

    Link | July 25th, 2011 at 4:34 pm

45. Ethiopia wrote:

    Thanx a lot man. It works.

    Link | July 30th, 2011 at 12:09 pm

46. PJ wrote:

    Thanks. It worked well as per instructions. GPFixup command went very well with dns & nb
    but my full computer name of the domain is not changed. still showing old name.
    How do i change my full computer name in the domain.
    Pls guide me
    God bless – PJ:)

    Link | August 13th, 2011 at 12:53 am

47. Monrojo wrote:

    Can this bea done on the server or doest it have to be done from a workstation

    Link | August 19th, 2011 at 7:47 am

48. dipankar wrote:

    thanks..is worked!!!great

    Link | September 11th, 2011 at 10:29 am

49. abhinandan wrote:

    i want to says that this is not a good explain of changing the domain name

    Link | September 13th, 2011 at 8:06 pm

50. [mab]L[oh]G wrote:

    2008 R2 Domäne – netbios name ändern…

    Ich hatte die Chance, diese Woche etwas in einer Produktivumgebung umzusetzen, was man normalerweise vielleicht mal in einer Teststellung macht: Eine nachträgliche NetBIOS Namensänderung einer 2008 R2 Domäne mit 2 AD Controllern, einer davon sogar mit …

    Link | September 30th, 2011 at 6:09 am

51. Spanky wrote:

    Getting the following error when running rendom /upload:

    C:\Windows\System32>rendom /showforest
    alsd.circ11.dcn [ForestRoot Domain, FlatName:ALSD]
    DomainDnsZones.alsd.circ11.dcn [PartitionType:Application]
    ForestDnsZones.alsd.circ11.dcn [PartitionType:Application]

    The operation completed successfully.

    C:\Windows\System32>rendom /upload
    Failed to upload Dns Root alias on the DN: CN=cf426965-7337-4ec0-af54-b8e73e05ae
    55,CN=Partitions,CN=Configuration,DC=alsd,DC=local, on host alsd-pdc.alsd.local.

    000021A2: SvcErr: DSID-030A0AE6, problem 5012 (DIR_ERROR), data 8610
    : The system cannot open the device or file specified. :110

    Any thoughts, please?

    Link | November 17th, 2011 at 9:01 am

52. Ixobelle wrote:

    worked great for me!

    there were a few lingering loose ends to tie up (changing the Primary DNS Suffix of the PDC to remove the lingering remnants of the old domain in MMC etc), but so far so good.

    My own domain is a tiny home network of 4 machines an a server, and I was running into issues where the internal domain (AD) and external domain(www., mail., etc) were using the same “xxxxx.com” suffix, which lead to me not being able to find http://www.xxxxxx.com internally, since no box in the LAN was named “www”, and this helped divide internal and external DNS.

    Thanks for the concise writeup!

    Link | November 30th, 2011 at 6:14 pm

53. Md Masroor Islam wrote:

    Thanks a lot buddy.
    It is working fine……Thanks for keeping it simple and short.

    Link | December 27th, 2011 at 7:37 am

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