While making sure a server was being automatically patched every month through Windows Updates, I logged on and made the necessary changes to get the server into WSUS, but then I wanted to verify that this server would install and reboot automatically. Opening the Group Policy Management Console, I was greeted with "The Network Name could not be found."

Troubleshooting this message, I found that if I connected to the other domain controller, I could load the GPMC without any issues. Furthermore, the DC I originally attempted work on was reporting the following error:

Event Type:       Error
Event Source:     NtFrs
Event Category:   None
Event ID:         13568
Description:      The File Replication Service has detected that the replica set "DOMAIN SYSTEM VOLUME (SYSVOL SHARE)" is in JRNL_WRAP_ERROR.

Further troubleshooting showed that this DC didn't seem to have any replicated data from the other domain controller. Fortunately, this same event had a resolution in the log as well.

Setting the "Enable Journal Wrap Automatic Restore" registry parameter to 1 will cause the following recovery steps to be taken to automatically recover from this error state.

  1. At the first poll, which will occur in 5 minutes, this computer will be deleted from the replica set. If you do not want to wait 5 minutes, then run "net stop ntfrs" followed by "net start ntfrs" to restart the File Replication Service.
  2. At the poll following the deletion this computer will be re-added to the replica set. The re-addition will trigger a full tree sync for the replica set.

WARNING: During the recovery process data in the replica tree may be unavailable. You should reset the registry parameter described above to 0 to prevent automatic recovery from making the data unexpectedly unavailable if this error condition occurs again.

To change this registry parameter, run regedit.

Click on Start, Run and type regedit.
Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Click down the key path:
   "System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NtFrs\Parameters"
Double click on the value name
   "Enable Journal Wrap Automatic Restore"
and update the value.

If the value name is not present you may add it with the New->DWORD Value function under the Edit Menu item. Type the value name exactly as shown above.

After running through the steps listed above, everything synced up like it was supposed to and the GPMC started working on the original DC.