Relocation of the office with new domain controller

Question

Hello We are going to relocate our whole office physically into a new office location. Currently, I have domain controller DC1, DC2 and file server. File server sharing the files to different department to use. I would like to get rid of the two DCs (DC1 and DC2) for some reasons, and then rebuild the other DC in the new office. But I would like to keep the file server. I don't mind to redo the sharing or security settings because I have just around 10 or less people. In this case, do I have to disjoin the file server from the old domain first? or I can do the disjoin even without any of the old DC in the new network? Also for the end users' PC, should I disjoin before moving the PCs away? If we disjoin the PC from the old domain, can the user get back to the profile (e.g. files on the Desktops?) Thanks Timothy

Answer 1

You should have no issues joining the new domain with the existing desktops. Just make sure you know the password for the local administrator account. Should work to let the user logon to new domain once, then logon with another account that has local administrative rights and point the Reg_Expand_Sz ProfileImagePath to the old profile.

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Answer 2

If you build a new domain even with same name the GUID for domain is different and the members will all need to be joined to new domain. Users will get a new profile when they logon to new domain. It may be possible to point the registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
of new profile back to old domain profile location.

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Answer 3

I would like to confirm if this is necessary to disjoin the existing domain first?

It should not make a difference. Just make sure you know the password for the local administrator account so you can logon locally to do the new domain join.