Restoring System State

[Guest]

I have thrown in the towel on a downed DC server and, after making all the
backups I could from the mirror drive: System State, Home Directories and
other misc. folders, I was wondering exactly how much I would regain by
running a restore from the System State backup tape? Would I get back all
the AD, computer accounts & etc? I pretty sure I'm going to have to
reestablish the DNS and DHCP services - or do I just install the services and
would System State restore pick that up, too?

Thanks.

 

[Steve Duff [MVP]]

System state restore should restore everything if done correctly. You should not need to
configure anything except a bare running Windows. It is not necessary to promote
to a DC first in most situations, though you may have to run the state restore twice
if this is msbackup (it will usually crash out near the end the first time. Just boot to
DS restore mode and run it again.) Be sure to select overwrite-always for the
restore operation.

Steve Duff, MCSE, MVP
Ergodic Systems, Inc.

 

[Guest]

That's booting to DS Restore by way of the F8 key at startup? I've got the
basic OS on the system now. Both times you're referring to are in the DS
Restore mode aren't they?

Thanks Steve.
Dana

 

[Guest]

I tried the authoritative restore in DS Restore mode using the NTDSUTIL
program at the command prompt but there is no means of designating the tape
drive as the source for these files or any other location from what I can
tell using the /? to list switches for the authoritative restore command in
DCR.

Failing this I performed the sytem restore from the Restore Wizard while in
DCF mode and this had the unfortunate result of making the sytem unbootable
in ANY mode whatsoever. I did manage to get back to a bootable state with
the repair function in Windows Setup but it's back to the original basic
installation with no referance to the old domain.

Is there a particular place on the drive or \WINNT that I should restore
these particular backup files to in order for NTDSUTIL to find them?

Thanks.

 

[Steve Duff [MVP]]

I think you may be overcomplicating things.

If you only have a single DC, then you shouldn't have to bother with
the authoritative restore as there's nothing to replicate to.

Just restore boot/system partition and system state from your backup
of the DC on top of a clean install of Win2K as a plain old standalone server.
After you get it running as a DC, run dcdiag /fix and netdiag /fix to clean up
and verify that things are back they way they should be. QED.

Now if this DC had replication partners, then the equation gets much
more complex as it depends on a lot of fine details of the specific
situation as to what is the appropriate way to proceed. One alternative
is to manually clear the old dc out of AD, and then dcpromo a
clean install and let AD replication do its magic. Manually scrubbing
a DC out of AD can be a lot of scut work in some cases, so it just depends.

The NTDSUTIL authoritative restore is designed to be applied
AFTER you restore the backup (a non-authoritative restore). Its main purpose
is to adjust the sequence counts on active directory objects so that the
other DCs will believe that this data is more current than what they
hold and in-replicate that, rather than immediately overwriting it.
(For that reason it is important to immedately boot in to DS Restore mode
after the tape restore.) If there are no other DCs, then this step clearly
isn't very important.

Steve Duff, MCSE, MVP
Ergodic Systems, Inc.

 

[Guest]

It is true that there are no other DCs on the network. At this point I have
the distinct feeling that any system information (computer and user accounts
in AD, etc.) that I may have saved has been lost with the possible exception
of .dns records in the old mirror partition. After spending some time in
Minasi's book last night that one possibility came to light.

If performing a reinstall of the system state backup causes the OS to freeze
in all possible boot options would you say that the sytem state backup had
some corruption? This is what happened when I gave up on authoritative
restore and went to the Restoration Wizard while in DS Restore mode. I had
finished with the basic re-creation of the boot partition and installation of
the OS so there was a blank slate there as far as network configuration was
concerned. When I rebooted after that the black screen with the progress bar
across the bottom would proceed to the right of the screen and then ...
nothing. All hard drive activity would end at that point and the system
would just sit there.

I'll look up dcdiag /fix and netdiag /fix. You're supposed to use these
after you complete dcpromo?

It is certainly true that confusion reigns supreme in this instance. I've
never had to deal with a failure of this magnitude in any of the past twelve
years of running networks. I'd always had faith that the mirrored partition
would pick up where the old left off - in a disk failure scenario - but
mirroring also brings in corruption as this one apparently has. Both drives
have tested good using several different scanning programs. It's supremely
frustrating to find that actual details of recovery are incomplete when it
comes to documenting the actual steps. I've always wished for a decent class
on Microsoft server systems that I could attend here in the middle of west
Texas but server failures are never planned and, thankfully few and far
between ... so far.

Thanks for your patience.
Dana

 

[Steve Duff [MVP]]

If you can boot DSR mode OK but not normally, then AD corruption
would certainly seem to be the culprit. (Otherwise that would seem
to be a problem with the hardware enumeration.)

If an in-place upgrade reinstall doesn't fix it, then you can
try repairing the AD database: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=258062
or using esentutl as a last resort if that doesn't work.

Not much past that point other than an older backup and/or rebuilding the
domain by hand.

Steve Duff, MCSE, MVP
Ergodic Systems, Inc.