Remove a DHCP Scope

Applies To: Windows Server 2008

You can use this procedure to remove a DHCP scope.

Membership in the Administrators or DHCP Administrators group is the minimum required to complete this procedure.

Removing scopes

You can use the DHCP console to remove a scope when a subnet is no longer in use. In most cases, scopes are removed only when you need to renumber your network to use a different IP address range.

To retire a current scope and renumber your network to use a different scope, be sure to do the following first:

  1. Create the new scope using a different range of addresses.

  2. Configure options for the new scope.

  3. Activate the new scope and deactivate the old scope.

  4. When all clients are no longer using the old scope, remove the old scope.

To remove a DHCP scope

  1. Open the DHCP console.

  2. In the console tree, click the applicable scope.

  3. On the Action menu, click Delete.

  4. When prompted, click Yes to delete the scope.

Important

Before removing a scope, be sure you have deactivated it long enough to migrate clients to a different scope. To migrate clients, either wait for 50 percent of the configured scope lease time to elapse or manually renew clients in another active scope. After all clients have been moved or forced to seek leases in another scope, you can safely remove the inactive scope.