ADSM-L

Re: WinNT Restore Gone Awry

1997-04-01 18:39:12
Subject: Re: WinNT Restore Gone Awry
From: "Prather, Wanda" <PrathW1 AT CENTRAL.SSD.JHUAPL DOT EDU>
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 18:39:12 -0500
I have done several bare-metal restores of WinNT 4.0.
There are several things that could have gone wrong.

*       If the machine had been corrupted for 4 or 5 days, AND they let the
ADSM backups continue to run, any files that were missing from the C:
drive during those days got marked as "expired" by the incremental
backup.  Then when you do the restore, those expired files are not
"active" and so do not get restored, unless you specifically ask for the
inactive versions.  I would have pulled off the server a list of all the
active and inactive files for that client, and at least used the eyeball
method to compare what was restored to what was originally backed up by
ADSM.

*       If the machine had been corrupted for 4 or 5 days, AND they let the
ADSM backups continue to run, AND they restored the  registry, they just
put back the registry that matched the corrupted system (and which may
have been a part of the problem in the first place).  By default, when
you restore the registry, you get the most recent copy.  Before giving
up, I would have restored a copy of the registry that was older than the
"corrupted" system.

*       It depends on what "can't get to things" means.  If it just means the
desktop was hosed (icons missing, customization missing), that could be
the result of the corrupted registry, or a missing user profile (also
part of the registry).

Putting back the registry can be tricky.  I would have discouraged them
from doing the restore themselves, or at least gone and stood and
watched them do it.  (If they just LOGOFF and logon again without
rebooting, for example, the restore doesn't work.)  For other ADSM
administrators trying to recover WinNT, I would suggest the folowing:

*               PRACTICE restoring the registry SEVERAL times.
*               Understand how ADSM uses the /adsm/sys subdirectory when 
backing up
and restoring the registry.
*               Use the /adsm/sys files to practice recovering a back-level 
version
of the directory.
*               Make sure you understand where the user profiles live - NT 
3.5.1 and
NT 4.0 keep them in different places.






>----------
>From:  Linnea Nichols[SMTP:lnicho AT DIT.CO.FAIRFAX.VA DOT US]
>Sent:  Monday, March 31, 1997 8:05 PM
>To:    ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
>Subject:       WinNT Restore Gone Awry
>
>To: [email protected] <adsm-l AT vm.marist DOT edu>
>
>FROM: Linnea T. Nichols                           (703)324-2708
>-     Systems Programming Mgr.          LNICHO AT co.fairfax.va DOT us
>-     Fairfax County Department of Information Technology
>Subject: WinNT Restore Gone Awry
>I just had my first experience with restoring a WinNT and it has not
>been a pleasant experience. We couldn't get it restored, and the user is
>now not very happy at all with me. The client has known that the machine
>was corrupted in some fashion for 4 or 5 days now. But ADSM has been
>performing it's backup every night just fine. By the time I heard about
>the problems, the user had already reformatted their hard drive and
>reinstalled WinNT -- so we did an DSMC RESTORE with -LATEST and -REP=NO.
>Restores appeared to go fine. Then the user did a DSMC REGREST ENTIRE --
>also appeared to work fine. After rebooting the machine, the user said
>that everything was hosed and that they couldn't get to things (but it
>appears that NT rebooted -- I wasn't there to see the error messages ).
>Needless to say, the user is very unhappy, talking backing up to their
>own tape drives, and is rebuilding/re-installing applications as I type
>this. Is there anyway that I could have gotten this system restored???
>(I've read the bare metal restore, and since they'd already reformatted
>the hard drive, it didn't seem to make a lot of sense to try the restore
>partition approach). Where did I go wrong?????
>
>Linnea Nichols                          lnicho AT co.fairfax.va DOT us
>Fairfax Co. Govt., Fairfax, VA                     703-324-2708
>***************************************************************
>"Discontent is the first necessity of progress" - Thomas Edison
>
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