Active Directory Metadata Cleanup Sometimes it can/will happen that a correct removal from a Domain Controller isn’t possible because of a hardware crash, you have to force the removal of a DC or the previous admin have left some “garbage” for you. So you have to do a metadata cleanup, otherwise all other DCs will try to replicate with that machine, as they are “thinking” this Domain Controller still exists, which fills also the event viewer with not wanted error messages. Additional the support tools dcdiag and repadmin or replmon will report problems. The metadata cleanup can be done with NTDSUTIL for the AD database part according to: How to remove data in Active Directory after an unsuccessful domain controller demotion The above article applies to all Windows versions starting with Windows 2000 Server up to Windows Server 2008 R2. There can also be the situation that the FSMO roles must be seized as the not longer existing DC was the owner of them: Using Ntdsutil.exe to transfer o...