You want to change the default garbage collection interval.
Open ADSI Edit.
In the left pane, expand cn=Configuration cn=Services cn=Windows NT.
Right-click on cn=Directory Service and select Properties.
Edit the garbageColPeriod attribute and set it to the interval in hours that the garbage collection process should run (the default is 12 hours).
Click OK.
Create an LDIF file called change_garbage_period.ldf with the following contents:
dn: cn=Directory Service,cn=Windows NT,cn=Services,cn=Configuration,<ForestRootDN> changetype: modify replace: garbageCollPeriod garbageCollPeriod: <IntervalInHours> -
then run the following command:
> ldifde -v -i -f change_garbage_period.ldf
' This code changes the default garbage collection interval ' ------ SCRIPT CONFIGURATION ------ intGarbageColl = <IntervalInHours> ' ------ END CONFIGURATION --------- set objRootDSE = GetObject("LDAP://RootDSE") set objDSCont = GetObject("LDAP://cn=Directory Service,cn=Windows NT," & _ "cn=Services," & objRootDSE.Get("configurationNamingContext") ) objDSCont.Put "garbageCollPeriod", intGarbageColl objDSCont.SetInfo WScript.Echo "Successfully set the garbage collection interval to " & _ intGarbageColl
When an object is deleted from the Configuration naming context, a Domain naming context, or an application partition, the original object is removed from Active Directory, and a tombstone object is created that contains a small subset of the object's original attributes. This tombstone object remains in Active Directory for the duration of the tombstone lifetime (default is 60 days) before it gets completely removed. See Recipe 16.18 for more information on the tombstone lifetime.
A garbage collection process runs on each domain controller that automatically removes expired tombstone objects. This process runs every 12 hours by default, but you can change it to run more or less frequently by setting the garbageCollPeriod attribute on the cn=DirectoryService,cn=WindowsNT,cn=Services,cn=Configuration, <RootDomainDN> object to the frequency in hours.
Recipe 16.18 for modifying the tombstone lifetime, Recipe 16.14 for logging the number of tombstones that get garbage collected, and MS KB 198793 (The Active Directory Database Garbage Collection Process)