Remove a demoted or failed DC from Active Directory using Ntdsutil.exe
If you ever have been in a situation where your domain controller crashes or failed and there is no way you intend to bring it back to production then you must remove the failed domain controller objects from Active Directory. In a regular procedure, to remove Domain controller from domain, you will run dcpromo to demote, but in this case, the domain controller is no more, so you have to use the ntdsutil tool to remove the objects from active directory. Also, you will need ntdsutil to remove domain controller from domain in a situation where you have tried to use dcpromo to demote but it failed, then you decided to use dcpromo /forceremoval. The force removal process does not totally clean the DC objects, so you will need to use ntdsutil to complete the process. Read more…
