Sometimes it’s still the simple things.

Sat at a client this week and had a 2008 server that simply would not share out SYSVOL after running dcpromo – frsdiag looked normal, Event Viewer threw “normal” messages about the server being added to the replica set but still no SYSVOL share appeared. Various permutations of D2/D4 yielded no joy, nor did demote/re-promote.

And so we followed the first rule of AD troubleshooting…okay, actually the 2nd rule after “It’s always DNS”. The 2nd rule of AD troubleshooting being? Go to lunch and let your brain think about something else for awhile…got back from food and:

“Waitaminnit, is that McAffee anti-virus installed?”

“Huh. Yeah. It is. Why don’t we disable that.”

Demoted/re-promoted again for good measure? SYSVOL shared right out.

Comments

[Sean]

Do you know why? Because it was a really old AV that kept rescanning the changing SYSVOL files? I hadn't heard of any recent problems with AV that would prevent SYSVOL from sharing out.

[Mike Kline]

So now you can have three rules

1. DCpromo is the new reboot
2. It's always DNS
3. Blame Anti-Virus

I'll call them "laura's rules" :)

Good catch on this one.