Domain Controller Died and now cannot get CRM back online

Question

Hi Folks, 

got a bit of a situation on my hands and was wondering if anybody has any solutions.......

So, the company I am doing work for only had a single domain controller in their office and it finally died. (Power supply failure followed by hard drive failure). No backup is available.

A new hard drive and power supply were obtained and server was re-installed (2008 Standard, previously 2003) and domain (same name) was recreated. User accounts were recreated and employees were removed from old domain and re-added to the new domain.

So now the network is back online, but the dynamics CRM wont come back online. the message displayed on the user end is 

"No microsoft dynamics crm user exists with the specified domain name and user id".....

I tried to access it from the server itself and no luck, same message. Tried to run deployment manager but it will not load, get MMC error that it could not load the snap in..... Exception type: System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.ActiveDirectoryObjectNotFoundException

 

Any help would be appreciated.

-- Beeners

 

Answer 1

The AD domain is NOT the Same.   You may have created the forest with the same name but the GUIDs that ID the users are now different from the tables in the SQL databases.

 

So that means that the installation accout used to install CRM is different.  That's the deployment administrator.

I would say, your doing a reinstall.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952934

Read this link carefully.

Too much risk with bad AD managment.

 

---

Curtis J Spanburgh

Answer 2

You'll find that even though the domain name and usernames are the same, the guids associated with the domain/CRM users/service accounts are not the same.

If it were me, I'd take a backup of the organisation databases, rejoin the servers to the domain, reinstall CRM, restore the org db and import the database with deployment manager. You will have the option to map the old CRM user accounts to the newly created users in the domain.

This guide may help.

Neil.

---

Neil - My CRM Blog

Answer 3

Thanks for the rapid replies, so looks like I'm SOL...

So here's the noob question.... should I wipe the crm & sql server entirely and start from scratch? (after backing up databases) or can I do a simple uninstall or dynamics crm from programs and features?

Also, what would be the best way to backup the databases? (sorry I am fairly new to this, but can follow instructions quite well

Thanks, 

 

 

Answer 4

Beeners, Neil is pointng you to the same document.   Let me add.  Even if it's a small shop, two domain controllers please.

There are lots of things that can be done.  But should they be done?

/:>

 

---

Curtis J Spanburgh

Answer 5

Thanks Curt, yes I know that it should have two DC's and I am in process of setting up the 2nd right now. Too bad the damage is already done. 

 

I will follow the reinstall & backup steps provided.

Thanks again,

Beeners  

Answer 6

It's really tough that a client has to learn the hard way.  I know.  Even a virtual machine can serve as a second DC.

The licensing is not expensive either.

 

---

Curtis J Spanburgh