Corrupted registry on single DC for domain - 2003 Server - can't boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ollie Strickland
  • Start date Start date
O

Ollie Strickland

I have a client with a small domain - a single DC. A corrupted system
hive in the registry is preventing this machine from booting and there
is backup, system state or otherwise. The drives/partitions are fine.
Is it possible to restore the Active Directory structure to another
system in this situation?

Thanks,
Ollie Strickland
 
A corrupted system hive in the registry is preventing this machine from
booting and there is backup, system state or otherwise. The
drives/partitions are fine.
Click to expand...

I assume you are saying here that you DON'T have a backup?!?

Is it possible to restore the Active Directory structure to another
system in this situation?
Click to expand...

Not really. If you could boot the machine, then you could add another DC to
the domain, replicate the AD and transfer the roles and then remove the old
DC and clean up the AD.

If you cannot get the DC online, then you can't do this.

You should try running the repair, first. The problem you've got is that
the Registry is part of the System State, and is needed to restore AD...
 
Paul, thanks for your reply. Yes, that was a typo - I don't have a
backup. I have some other information I'd like your comment on.

In windows\system32\config I have what two files - system.sp and
software.sp that I am guessing are backups of these hives made by the
SP1 installation process a couple of weeks ago. That is, by the way,
when I started having weird problems. (Dell knows about the SP1 issues
on some of their disk controllers but their solution didn't solve my
problem). So - I renamed those two files to "system" and "software"
(backed up the originals) to replace my corrupt registry with the
pre-SP1 registry and I'm still suffering from the same result. I can
get to the initial boot menu, but can't get the GUI up. The boot
process proceeds as far as "crcdisk.sys" and then freezes. Do I need
to do anything else other than rename those two files to make them
active?

Do you have any other recommendations?

Thanks,
Ollie
 
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