>I have an NT server that I backup with ADSM. I need to do a restore.
>How do you replace the DLLs that are in use? Can I restore them to a
>temp directory and then boot from a floppy and copy them back?
>
>I'm new to NT how would you boot from a floppy? Can I use a DOS disk,
>I wouldn't think so because I'm using NTFS?

Ron,
Restoring a complete NT system is tricky. You can backup an active,
running NT system, but you can't directly restore it for the reasons
you are seeing: locked DLL's etc. If the NT server is critical and
justifies the effort I would recommend that you install a second copy
of NT in a repair partition. An ADSM client on this repair system can
then be used to restore the primary partition which contains the main
NT image. If you are loaded from the repair partition the primary
partition will not be running and there will be no locked files.

There was a append on this list a month or so ago by Pete Tanenhaus
detailing the steps of restoring an NT system including recovery of the
registry hives back to their proper locations.

With regards your second question about booting from a floppy, it can't
be done. NT can only be loaded from a fixed disk. This is a restriction
with NT. The NT boot process is actually in two stages:

 1, The hardware reads the NT Master Boot Record, created in the primary
    partition during the NT install. The MBR then loads NTLDR which
    in turn reads BOOT.INI. BOOT.INI lists the available NT (and other)
    systems that can be started and the disk and partition in which they
    reside. NTDETECT.COM is also used during this process to check the
    h/w config prior to loading NT. These three files are hidden, system
    files.

 2, NT is then loaded from the partition specified in BOOT.INI.
    Assuming that the h/w detected by NTDETECT matches the NT system
    image (as detected during the original install process) then NT will
    load normally. For this reason a 'cloned' system such as the OS/2
    3 diskette boot will never work with NT. The NT kernel is customized
    every time it's installed for the h/w config it's being installed on

Step 1 can be done from diskette assuming that the diskette is formatted
from NT File Manager (this puts an NT MBR on the diskette) and NTLDR,
NTDETECT, and BOOT.INI are then copied to the diskette. This is in
essence what the NT repair diskette is, created during installation.
If the primary partition is screwed up and NT won't boot/load then this
diskette can be used to load an NT image to do the repairs.
However step 2, the actual NT load MUST be from a fixed disk. If you
install another copy of NT somewhere else on the machine, preferably
on a different physical disk, you can in emergency load it using a
diskette loader. You will need to do some editing of BOOT.INI on the
diskette to ensure that it points to the right disk/partition.

This approach gives you some resilience. If your primary partition
won't load you can load a repair system from diskette, format the
primary partition and use ADSM to restore the last incremental backup
image.

 Tim Mortimer
  IBM International Technical Support Center, San Jose
  Tim_Mortimer AT vnet.ibm DOT com