I was preparing to replace some 5 year old DELL PE1850 servers running Active Directory with new DELL R610 servers when the DCDIAG.exe output showed a possible issue with SYSVOL FRS and some missing expected value.

Starting test: VerifyEnterpriseReferences

The following problems were found while verifying various important DN

references.  Note, that  these problems can be reported because of

latency in replication.  So follow up to resolve the following

problems, only if the same problem is reported on all DCs for a given

domain or if  the problem persists after replication has hadreasonable time to replicate changes.

[1] Problem: Missing Expected Value

Base Object: CN=DC1,OU=CITY,OU=Domain Controllers,DC=corp,DC=com

Base Object Description: "DC Account Object"

Value Object Attribute Name: msDFSR-ComputerReferenceBL

Value Object Description: "SYSVOL FRS Member Object"

Recommended Action: See Knowledge Base Article: Q312862

The log points to a knowledge base article at  but that has no relevance here.This is a phantom error when found under following circumstances. It occurs on Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2 when you are running in Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2 domain functional level. Since Windows 2008 the File Replication Service (FRS) that sysvol uses has been replaced with the  Distributed File Replication service (DFRS) as used by DFS. If you’re not yet running DFRS when you can (which is highly recommend  http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2010/04/22/the-case-for-migrating-sysvol-to-dfsr.aspx but not required), you’ll see this error show up when running DCDIAG.exe, so no real issue at all.

There are lots of posts on the internet pointing to various possible issues or causes: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverDS/thread/2ce07c3f-9956-4bec-ae46-055f311c5d96/  & http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-IE/winserverDS/thread/3062d40a-b73e-42ea-b27a-e817ee29abc1. But before you worry to much I suggest you check that everything that has to do with replication is running well. Is so and you’re running in Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2 domain functional level you’ll see this error go way once you complete your migration to DFRS.

So, to recapture, if you have a well maintained & working Active Directory, do not panic when you see some warning or failures in diagnostic test results. Make sure things are indeed fine and if you conclude that you don’t have any lingering problems, do some further research on what the real reason might . This pahnatom error is a fine example of this.

There is an absolute brilliant step by step guide to get the move from FRS to DFRS completed without a problem in a series by the storage team at Microsoft . You can find the first of a 5 part blog series over here http://blogs.technet.com/b/filecab/archive/2008/02/08/sysvol-migration-series-part-1-introduction-to-the-sysvol-migration-process.aspx.

While you are at it. If your still running DFS in Windows 2000 native mode, you might want to upgrade that as well. More on that later