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Does running forestprep and domain prep twice hurt?

I am currently running a Windows 2000 Active Directory with two domain controllers. We have another member server running Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003. I am not sure if the previous admin has run adprep/forestprep and adprep/domainprep.

I just purchased two new servers running Windows Server 2003. I would like to promote the new servers to domain controllers, move the FSMO, PDC and Masters roles over to the newly promoted DC, and then demote the two Windows 2000 Server DCs.

Is it okay to run forestprep and domainprep even if they were run before setting up Exchange Server? Is it okay to run it a second time? What other things do I need to do to upgrade Active Directory to Windows Server 2003?

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You will not cause any harm by re-running forestprep or domainprep if they have already been run against the target domain and forest. You can consult this Microsoft Knowledge Base article for detailed instructions on how to upgrade a Windows 2000 Active Directory to Windows Server 2003.

This was first published in March 2007

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