{"id":1354,"date":"2014-06-05T10:29:35","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T17:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/?p=1354"},"modified":"2025-10-21T17:46:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T00:46:04","slug":"how-to-remove-a-hyper-v-server-2012-r2-from-an-orphanednon-existent-domain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/?p=1354","title":{"rendered":"Video: How to Remove a Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 from an Orphaned\/Non-Existent Domain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"gk-legend\" data-style=\"style3\"><strong>Free Video :<\/strong><strong>Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 &#8211; How to Rejoin a Domain<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #4494dd;\"><strong>Hyper-V Server Cannot be Removed from a Non-Existent Domain:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul data-style=\"style6\">\n<li><span style=\"color: #4494dd;\"><strong>&#8220;The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted.&#8221;<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #4494dd;\"><strong>&#8220;The machine is already joined to the domain&#8221;<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>[floated align=&#8221;left&#8221;]Hyper-V Server 2012 R2[\/floated] is normally used as a member of a domain. It is not uncommon to get in a situation where you need to unjoin\/remove the Hyper-V server from the domain it is a member of. If the domain is available and there is normal connectivity, the whole process should be pretty simple. Surprisingly, if the original domain does not exist anymore, you get yourself into a Catch-22 situation &#8211; when you try to join the server to a different domain or a workgroup, you get one of the following error messages:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;The machine is already joined to the domain.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As you will see in the following video, the solution to this issue is pretty straightforward &#8211; you need to unjoin the server from command line using the FORCE parameter. One small detail, which is often forgotten, is to check whether you have access to the local admin account, and more importantly, whether this account is enabled. Again, this should be performed from command line.<\/p>\n<p>How to Remove a Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 from an Orphaned\/Non-Existent Domain<br \/>\n===========================================================================<br \/>\n#Check the list of local user accounts:<br \/>\nNET USER<\/p>\n<p>#Reset the local admin password:<br \/>\nNET USER administrator &#8220;THE_NEW_PASSWORD&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>#Get the details for a specific account<br \/>\nNET USER administrator<\/p>\n<p>#Enable a disabled user account:<br \/>\nNET USER administrator \/active:yes<\/p>\n<p>#Create a new user account:<br \/>\nNET USER HV-Admin &#8220;THE_PASS&#8221; \/add<\/p>\n<p>#Remove a Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 from an orphaned domain<br \/>\nNETDOM REMOVE \/d:nonexistentdomain.com HyperV-ServerName \/FORCE<\/p>\n<p>You can download the [tip label=&#8221;Text File with Commands&#8221; style=&#8221;1&#8243; href=&#8221;https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/HyperV-12R2-Commands.txt&#8221;]Hyper-V-Commands.txt <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/script-icon.jpg\" alt=\"How to Unjoin Hyper-V Server from Non-Existent Domain\" width=\"25\" height=\"27\" \/>[\/tip] that we are using in the demo.<br \/>\n<div id=\"kgvid_kgvid_0_wrapper\" class=\"kgvid_wrapper\">\n\t\t\t<div id=\"video_kgvid_0_div\" class=\"fitvidsignore kgvid_videodiv\" data-id=\"kgvid_0\" data-kgvid_video_vars=\"{&quot;id&quot;:&quot;kgvid_0&quot;,&quot;attachment_id&quot;:1367,&quot;player_type&quot;:&quot;Video.js 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itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/VideoObject\"><meta itemprop=\"thumbnailUrl\" content=\"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Hyper-V-12-R2-The-Specified-Domain-Either-Does-Not-Exist-Or-Could-Not-Be-Contacted_thumb85.jpg\"><meta itemprop=\"embedUrl\" content=\"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Hyper-V-12-R2-The-Specified-Domain-Either-Does-Not-Exist-Or-Could-Not-Be-Contacted.mp4\"><meta itemprop=\"contentUrl\" content=\"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Hyper-V-12-R2-The-Specified-Domain-Either-Does-Not-Exist-Or-Could-Not-Be-Contacted.mp4\"><meta itemprop=\"name\" content=\"Remove Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 from Non-Existent Domain\"><meta itemprop=\"description\" content=\"Remove Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 from Non-Existent Domain\"><meta itemprop=\"uploadDate\" content=\"2014-06-05T10:28:24-07:00\">\n\t\t\t\t<video id=\"video_kgvid_0\" playsinline controls preload=\"metadata\" poster=\"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Hyper-V-12-R2-The-Specified-Domain-Either-Does-Not-Exist-Or-Could-Not-Be-Contacted_thumb85.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"fitvidsignore video-js kg-video-js-skin\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<source src=\"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Hyper-V-12-R2-The-Specified-Domain-Either-Does-Not-Exist-Or-Could-Not-Be-Contacted.mp4?id=0\" type=\"video\/mp4\" data-res=\"600p\">\n<track id='kgvid_0_text_0' kind='subtitles' src='https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Hyper-V-12-R2-The-Specified-Domain-Either-Does-Not-Exist-Or-Could-Not-Be-Contacted.srt' srclang='en' label='Remove Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 from Non-Existent Domain'><track id='kgvid_0_text_1' kind='subtitles' src='' srclang='en' label='en-US'>\t\t\t\t<\/video>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<div style=\"display:none\" id=\"video_kgvid_0_meta\" class=\"kgvid_video_meta kgvid_video_meta_hover \">\n\t\t\t\t<span 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Exchange 2013<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"How to Install Exchange 2013\" href=\"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/video\/tutorials\/How-to-Install-Exchange-2013\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">How to Install Exchange 2013<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 is normally used as a member of a domain. It is not uncommon, to get in a situation where you need to unjoin\/remove the Hyper-V server from the domain that it is a member of. Surprisingly, if the original domain does not exist anymore, you get yourself into a Catch-22 situation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1368,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[343,15],"tags":[419,441,418,420],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netometer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}