Blog Post: Upgrading a Windows 2003 Domain to Windows Server 2008 R2 Functional Level Domain

First if you have any domain controllers that are on Windows Server 2000 make sure they have SP4 installed.  You can download from here.

I also recommend you have all of your 2003 domain controllers fully patched via WSUS or Windows Update.

You will need to login to a domain controller using a user with Enterprise Admin credentials

Now you put the DVD for Windows Server 2008 R2 into the DVD drive (if you do not have a DVD drive, hook up an external or download the ISO of the 2008 R2 Media from TechNet or MSDN and mount it using any number of free tools on the market like MagicDisk and mount the ISO)

open a command prompt

Start -  Run ? cmd ? <ENTER>

change to the DVD drive (open explorer to see what the drive letter of the DVD is)  In my example, the drive is F:

Change to that drive and to the support\adprep folder

F:  <ENTER>  CD Support\adprep <ENTER>  

There are two executable in this folder you will need to run one of them.  If the domain controller you are on has a 32 bit OS on it you will want to run ADPrep32.exe if it is a 64bit OS you will need to run ADPrep.exe.  In either case you will have to run it with a command line parameter of /ForestPrep.  It will ask you to confirm you have all 2000 domain controllers updated to SP4 you will need to type c to continue. WARNING: The only way to rollback is to restore the entire system and domain from backup!!! In this sample it would look like this:

adprep32 /forestprep <ENTER>

c <ENTER>

It will take the system several minutes. If you are on a 64bit OS just remove the ?32? in the above line.

Now you have the Forest prepared for the new server.  You must now prep the domain by running adprep /domainprep. In my case it would look like this:

adprep32 /domainprep <ENTER>

It will take the system several minutes. If you are on a 64bit OS just remove the ?32? in the above line.

After a full replication of the domain to all domain controllers, you should now be able to run DCPromo from a command prompt of the Windows Server 2008 R2 machine

NOTE: if you want to install a ReadOnly domain controller, you will also need to run ?adprep32 /rodcprep? on 32 bit OS or ?adprep /rodcprep? on a 64bit OS.

There is a TechNet article on this at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753437(WS.10).aspx but I found the path in the article was not correct.  (perhaps 2008 DVD is under the sources folder?)

If you want to see the steps to add the domain controller under Windows Server 2008 R2 I will be doing an article on that very soon?

 

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