>From the data provided below it sounds like you have a lingering object & a lingering link value...not tragic, pretty straight forward to clean up. If you could be more specific as to domain layout & in which domain each user resides we could likely provide steps to fix this up.
If you search KB for lingering object you'll find all sorts of mention of them. I say that you must have a lingering object as link values need point so some object (they are nothing more than a DNT pointer really) so it sounds like you have an object in the partial NC on the GC which still represents that manager. ~Eric -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Loder Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 8:36 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: [ActiveDir] Linked Attributes Replication We've found something unusual in our forest and are hoping someone may have insight as to root-cause. Sometime back in 2003, when our forest was running W2K SP3, someone's manager was deleted, and that event was faithfully replicated around the originating domain and the forest GCs. The manager doesn't exist anywhere. Fast forward to today, forest now running W2K3 SP1. About 20% of the DCs (both originating domain DCs and forest GCs) show that the user still has a manager because the manager attribute contains a DN that no longer exists in the forest. Let me repeat that statement. If I look at GC_1 it shows the employee's manager is <not set>. If I look at GC_2 it shows manager is CN=Someone_that_no_longer_exists_in_the_forest. Yet both GC_1 and GC_2 show the same metadata for the manager attribute. At this point we're theorizing that when the user's manager was deleted, that change was faithfully replicated around the forest. However, the linked attribute update is not a replicated event - each DC is personally responsible for updating the backlink, and we had one W2K DC that didn't do it. Fast forward to today where 100% of the DCs have been reinstalled and repromoed as W2K3. Depending on which DC they sourced their promo from we now have the "corruption" spread we see today where some 20% of the DCs have the incorrect value. Has anyone else ever encountered this or have some idea what may that caused the initial "corruption"? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.activedir.org/ml/threads.aspx List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.activedir.org/ml/threads.aspx