Unable to raise Forest functional level from 2000 to 2003

I want to raise my forests functional level from 2000 to 2003. It is a very simply lab deployment, one GC and one DC, and one domain already at domain functional level 2003. There are very few lab users and no real activity. If I am selecting "Raise Forest Functional Level...", then I can properly see Current forest functional level: Windows 2000. I choose 2003 as the new functional level and click "Raise" and after some seconds I am getting error message "The functional level could not be raised. The error is: The directory service is busy." Can anyone please help.

Can you tell us whether it is the only DC in the domain? Has it got all the 5 FSMO roles, you can check with "netdom query fsmo" from command line. Atleast it must have the schema master role to raise the forest functional level. All the DCs have to be up and running and must be in sync, otherwise it fails. You can try to force replication in Ad sites and services before.

Did you try to demote any DCs in the domain in the past? Are you logged on with an account that has Schema Admin privileges? Is there any errors in the event log/dcdiag output? Did you confirm that replication is functioning properly between the 2 domain controllers? Why are you maintaining a seperate GC in a single domain forest? Why could not you configure both domain controllers as GCs?

in our infra we have windows 2003 as ad and exchange 2003 now we have created win 2k8 as additional domain controller and transfers the fsmo role to win2k8 and just removed the ad from win 2k3 without doing metadeta cleanup
now i m not abel to rise the forest level of windows 2008 server which is actin as ad can any one please help me out we need to rais forest functional lvel for exchange 2k10 installtion.

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Originally Posted by saudager

in our infra we have windows 2003 as ad and exchange 2003 now we have created win 2k8 as additional domain controller and transfers the fsmo role to win2k8 and just removed the ad from win 2k3 without doing metadeta cleanup
now i m not abel to rise the forest level of windows 2008 server which is actin as ad can any one please help me out we need to rais forest functional lvel for exchange 2k10 installtion.

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You have to make sure the new DCs are all GC and the FSMOs are transferred. Additional assure that all domain machines use only the new DNS servers on the NIC, stop the DNS server service on the old one after change and set it to manual so you still can see what's going on also.