Hi All I have had a reasonably major issue with our 2008 DC, things were happily humming along, and then all of a sudden exchange services started failing, it was out of hours so I rebooted the server, when it came up it was pretty much left in a state of chaos, I was no longer able to connect to it remotely (could ping ok though) there were a whole range of event log errors stating that no domain controller could be found, none of the directory services could start, etc etc. I couldn't get into the network configurations I just got a empty screen on the manage network connections screen. There were so many different errors coming up in the event log it was almost impossible to figure out what was the initial cause of the problem so, after quite a bit of hair pulling, I ran a DC diag which told me that the host name of the server could not be reached, and I noticed that the host name it was trying to resolve on an IPV6 address, coincidently a couple of days earlier I had un-ticked IPV6 on the adapter while trouble shooting some other issues So to fix the issue I found this article that talks about changing IPV6 referrals etc, I chose setting 0x20 (32) and after a reboot everything came back to normal (more or less, still a few funnies but I have a DC) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852 My question is, Why does AD bind its self to an IPV6 address, which it as dynamically assigns its self? once this address changes (for what ever reason) it just kills everything, this is the second time I have had this issue, the first time was on an SBS2008 box, and after 12 hours of trouble shooting that, booting into last known good conf was the only fix it last time is what I have changed here a good fix? am I going to run into more issues down the track? I am concerned that such a small thing can cause such a major issue Cheers

You were fortunate with the SBS2008 box. On my first SBS2008 install I also unchecked the IPV6 option & the server never recovered, so I decided to rebuild the server from scratch - much more than 12 hours downtime. Simply don't disable the IPV6 option & you won't have that issue again.Regards, Scott

Hello, so this DC isn't a SBS version? Is that the only DC in the domain and if i understand you correct it also has Exchange, which version, installed? Please post an unedited ipconfig /all from it so we can check some settings. Please use the support tools to collect some information files: dcdiag /v /c /d /e /s:dcname >c:\dcdiag.txt repadmin /showrepl dc* /verbose /all /intersite >c:\repl.txt ["dc* is a place holder for the starting name of the DCs if they all begin the same (if more then one DC exists)] dnslint /ad /s "DCipaddress" (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321045) As the output will become large, DON'T post them into the thread, please use Windows Sky Drive(with open access!) and add the link from it here. Also the /e in dcdiag scans the complete forest, so better run it on COB.Best regards Meinolf Weber Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

Hi, AD doesn’t bind itself to IPV6. But by default, Windows Server 2008 and later system will try IPv6 first when trying to communicate with other systems. Unchecking IPv6 in the NIC properties is not a proper way to disable IPv6. Please disable IPv6 completely on your system and test again. Also, if it’s SBS problem, it’s suggested to submit a post in the forum below, they are the best resource for SBS problem: Small Business Server http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/smallbusinessserver/threads Thanks.This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" on the post that helps you, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.