Active Directory Replication encountered the existence of objects in the following partition that have been deleted from the local domain controllers (DCs) Active Directory database. Not all direct or transitive replication partners replicated in the deletion before the tombstone lifetime number of days passed. Objects that have been deleted and garbage collected from an Active Directory partition but still exist in the writable partitions of other DCs in the same domain, or read-only partitions of global catalog servers in other domains in the forest are known as "lingering objects".
This event is being logged because the source DC contains a lingering object which does not exist on the local DCs copy of Active Directory database and the local DC does *not* have the following registry key enabled to ensure strict replication consistency. Strict replication consistency prevents lingering objects residing on a source DC from re-replicating to a destination DC that has already processed the deletion. Since this registry key is not set, the object will be re-replicated and recreated in the local Active Directory database.
The best solution to this problem is to identify and remove all lingering objects in the forest, starting with the writable and read-only partitions containing the object referenced in this event, and then enable the following registry key to ensure strict replication consistency.
Source DC (Transport-specific network address):
%4
Object:
%1
Object GUID:
%2
Directory partition:
%3
Destination highest property USN:
%5
Registry Key:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
TDS\Parameters\%6
User Action:
Remove Lingering Objects:
The action plan to recover from this error can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=314282.
If both the source and destination DCs are Windows Server 2003 DCs, then install the support tools included on the installation CD. To see which objects would be deleted without actually performing the deletion run "repadmin /removelingeringobjects /ADVISORY_MODE". The eventlogs on the source DC will enumerate all lingering objects. To remove lingering objects from a source domain controller run "repadmin /removelingeringobjects ".
If either source or destination DC is a Windows 2000 Server DC, then more information on how to remove lingering objects on the source DC can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=314282 or from your Microsoft support personnel.
Replication errors between DCs sharing a common partition can prevent user and compter acounts, trust relationships, their passwords, security groups, security group memberships and other Active Directory configuration data to vary between DCs, affecting the ability to log on, find objects of interest and perform other critical operations. These inconsistencies are resolved once replication errors are resolved. DCs that fail to inbound replicate deleted objects within tombstone lifetime number of days will remain inconsistent until lingering objects are manually removed by an administrator from each local DC.
Lingering objects may be prevented by ensuring that all domain controllers in the forest are running Active Directory, are connected by a spanning tree connection topology and perform inbound replication before Tombstone Live number of days pass.