Event ID 2042: It has been too long since this machine replicated

Today I was teaching Microsoft’s Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Best Practices Workshop and ran into a problem where the students’ Virtual PCs refused to raise Domain Functional level from Windows 2000 Native to Windows Server 2003. The two DCs were able to ping each other by name, the replication (repadmin /syncall /P) worked fine and revealed no errors. The error said that the domain controller was too busy so the functional level could not be raised. The Event Viewer showed error 2042.

This TechNet article explains in more detail how to resolve the issue. According to the article “If a domain controller has not replicated with its partner for longer than a tombstone lifetime, it is possible that a lingering object problem exists on one or both domain controllers. When this condition occurs, inbound replication with the source partner is stopped on the destination domain controller and event ID 2042 is logged in the Directory Services event log.”

By adding the Allow Replication with Divergent and Corrupted Partner registry key and then replicating the A.D. database, the students were able to raise the Domain Functional level.