Transfer the forest-Level Operations Master Roles

[Agilent]

I want to decommission a DC and have followed the methods required from microsoft but I am stuck at one place. It is not allowing me to transfer the domain naming master or the schema master to the new DC. I have tried via operations manager as well as via dcpromo to decommission the current DC. But using the operations manager I am getting the below message:

"The transfer of the operations master role cannot be performed because: The requested FSMO operation failed. The current FSMO holder could not be contacted" (Even though the current FSMO holder is the server I am running the Op Manager from)

Also, if I am using the dcpromo then I am getting the below message:

"The directory service was unable to transfer ownership of one or more floating single-master roles to the other servers"

Can anyone help me out? Thanks.

[Anywhere]

I guess that you are missing the third way of transferring the roles - just seize them using the ntdsutil command line. But you should really solve the underlying issue before a direct seizure.

[Russell]

Can you tell us whether there is a global catalog on the server holding the Domain Name Master role?

[Zachary]

I think you must not be running on the server. If you want to transfer using the GUI then you can logon to the server you wish to transfer to and pull. Also, these are the enterprise roles, which means that incase you are in a child domain, then you will need to be EA or have the proper delegated rights. As per others, have you checked whether there are any DCs that have been removed?

[malditof]

I will post what I finally figure out to solve the problem.

We have had a Windows 2000 Active Directoy domain for about 4 years.
One Win2k server w/ AD and 3 Win NT4.0 member servers. (yea , I know -only one dc - not a great idea. )

Since our Win2k DC is 4 years old we are replacing it. We bought a new server with Win 2k3 Std edition about 6 months ago. 6 months I did the stuff necessary ( updates /extensions , etc to AD ) so that I could put AD on Win2k3 and it could talk to the Win 2k DC. All happy and good and replicating, etc.

The new server was never put into production though , and has been shut down for 6months.

Now I need to put it into prod and eventually shut down the Win2K DC.

The WIn2k3 Server AD is tombstoned since it hasn't replicated in 6 months and refuses to replicate.
DC Promo will not uninstall it AD since it has a GC and is Domain Naming Master. and Operations Manager will not transfer the role, even a pull from the Win2k Server.

I will do more digging in the forums for info on seizing the Domain Naming Master role for the old WIn2k DC and removiing failed AD objects.

What would be the best way to go about moving demoting . re-promiting AD on the WIn2k3 server so will replicate with the Win2k Server? Eventually the WIn2k DC will go away.