Huge thanks to Matt Hopton at “How Do I Computer?” for this informative article on fixing DFS replication issues with the SYSVOL directory. In my case, symptoms were similar – AD group policies weren’t being successfully updated at a remote site with its own read-only domain controller. This was present in gpresult /h output.html, where scripts that had recently been added at logon to the main office DC earlier in the day were not able to be found on the branch domain controller.
Some additional notes:
- Look in Event Viewer under Applications and Services Logs > DFS Replication for a warning with ID 2213, which provides the wmic command needed to resume replication
- If the DC has been out of sync too long, there will be an Error with ID 4012; use:wmic.exe /namespace:\\root\microsoftdfs path DfsrMachineConfig set MaxOfflineTimeInDays=65and replace 65 with a number that is above the “server has been disconnected from other partners” value. Then, rerun the wmic command from the first event. Give it a few minutes and be patient and if all goes well, another event will pop into the log indicating successful initialization of the SYSVOL folder.