Transferring FSMO roles ???

I have been testing Windows 2008 and have a test domain with 2 domain controllers. The first DC is built as Server Core and holds all of the FSMO roles because it was the first DC. Building a new forest on a Server Core DC is easy once you have the answer file documentation! The second DC is conventional GUI type Windows 2008.

I decided I wanted to move the FSMO roles to the GUI based DC and because I hadn’t done it before decided to use PowerShell. This where things begin to get interesting. I came up with the following code

## get the domain controller object
$dom = [System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.Domain]::GetCurrentDomain()
$dc = $dom.FindDomainController()

## transfer the roles
$dc.TransferRoleOwnership([System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.ActiveDirectoryRole]::InfrastructureRole)
$dc.TransferRoleOwnership([System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.ActiveDirectoryRole]::RidRole)
$dc.TransferRoleOwnership([System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.ActiveDirectoryRole]::PdcRole)

$dc.TransferRoleOwnership([System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.ActiveDirectoryRole]::NamingRole)
$dc.TransferRoleOwnership([System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.ActiveDirectoryRole]::SchemaRole)

The first 2 transfers – RID and Infrastructure Master transfer perfectly. The PDC emulator fails, as does schema and naming master transfers with the "Server is unwilling to process the request error"

I have tried this from a DC and a workstation and get the same error. It is definitely not a permissions issue because I can transfer the roles using the GUI.

Any comment and help gratefully received