Friday 21 November 2014

Windows Server 2012 R2: Enabling the Active Directory Recycle Bin from the Active Directory Administrative Center "The FSMO role ownership could not be verified because its directory partition has not replicated successfully with at least one replication partner."

Windows Server 2012 R2: Enabling the Active Directory Recycle Bin from the Active Directory Administrative Center "The FSMO role ownership could not be verified because its directory partition has not replicated successfully with at least one replication partner." prevents you from enabling the Active Directory Recycle Bin.
 
 
From an Administrative Command Prompt I used the following command to confirm the FSMO role holders.


netdom query fsmo

Everything looked normal here so I continued to the next step which was to run the Active Directory Best Practice Analyser from Server Manager.
 
The Active Directory BPA came back with the error "The primary domain controller (PDC) emulator specification master in this forest is not configured to correctly synchronize time from a valid time source".
I used the following command from an Administrative CMD to configure the PDC Emulator to use time.microsoft.com as it's authoritive time source.


w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:time.microsoft.com /syncfromflags:manual /reliable:yes /update
 
 
I then issued this command on all of the other Domain Controllers to ensure they reflected the changes.


w32tm /config /syncfromflags:domhier /update
 
After this I re-run the Active Directory Best Practice Analyser and the error had been resolved.
 
I could then continue and enable the Active Directory Recycle Bin.