Julie,

  I have been reading your requests for information on the NT registry
restores to machines with different hardware.  I would like to share a
couple of thoughts on the matter with you in hopes that the exchange will
stimulate ideas on all sides.

 I just recently went through a series of classes on Microsoft NT and one
of these classes hit upon 2 topics.  The first topic is the design of the
registry itself and the second was the NT startup sequence.  Each of these
topics clearly pointed out how critical the registry is to NT.  I would be
surprised if any piece of major software worked without at least specific
portions of the registry being recovered.

The class discussed the design of the registry in general.  One of the
things that I observed (and like any observation should not be taken as
absolute fact) is that the hardware and software hives of the local_machine
sub-tree are do not include all of the information on the systems hardware
and software.  In looking through both of these, especially the hardware
hive, it is clear that this is not sufficient information for NT to start.

This observation was partially supported by the lesson covering NT startup.
 The NT startup takes place in phases.  In the SYSTEM hive under the
LOCAL_MACHINE sub-tree  the information for each service contains a value
that controls under which phase that service is loaded.  The information
that is contained in the SYSTEM hive is what I am afraid may bite you.  I
am concerned there may be data stored there that may reference specific
drivers, especially network protocol services.  I need to get the text of
the class and do some research, which I will pursue this week.

I did not want to wait until I had done this research before sharing these
thoughts so that the discussion could take advantage of your experiences as
well as the experiences of others on this forum.  If I have made any
incorrect deduction or observations then I hope you will correct me.

I have had another thought on the restoring of NT machines to unlike
hardware.  In realizing for our own DR planning that keeping the exact
configuration of machines in two different sights will be difficult, I have
begun thinking out the process.  For our needs, the high priority DR
recoveries will be limited to a small set of application servers.  I have
been playing around with the concept of using a utility that comes with the
resource kit to compare 2 registries.  My intention was to compare a
registry from before and after an application install and see what was
added or modified.  NT also includes a utility to update the registry via a
scripting language.

My intention is to become more familiar with the registry utilities.  If
the scripting utility allows you to query the registry contents as well as
updating it then a possible solution may be forming.

This solution may be some sort of a registry merging facility.  As I
mentioned earlier I will do some research and I will also send this message
to a microsoft rep that has assisted me in the past.

I encourage anyone on the listserv to share opinions and observations on
these thoughts.

Good Luck,
  Dan T.

----------
> From: Julie Phinney <julphinn AT EMPHESYS.E-MAIL DOT COM>
> From: Julie Phinney <julphinn AT EMPHESYS.E-MAIL DOT COM>
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: Win NT recovery
> Date: Sunday, June 22, 1997 9:32 PM
>
> Help anyone with NT clients..
> We are going to do an offsite disaster test in July where we assume
> the replacement hardware will be different from existing hardware.
> Therefore, the bootable recovery (actually it's just a repair partition
> on removable media) described in the Bare Metal redbook won't work.
> I'm trying to create disaster recov. instructions that basically do:
> 1. Install NT from scratch.
> 2. Install ADSM
> 3. Use ADSM to restore the data.
> I know very little about Win NT, and I don't understand the registry,
> but it seems to me you'd want some of that back.  Now if I understand
> correctly, we can't just restore it, because the target hardware is
> different.  But does that mean we can't restore any of it?  It's
> divided into pieces, right?  According to my ADSM doc, we can restore
> these hives: SAM SECURITY SOFTWARE SYSTEM
> So what are you all doing in the event of this kind of disaster.. where
> you have different replacement hardware.. Just dont restore the
> registry at all?  In addition to some kind (what kind?) of REGREST  do
> you do a
> DSMC RES C:\* -su=yes -rep=no ???   Or just skip the C: drive?
> Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!!
> TIA
> Julie Phinney
> JULPHINN @ EMPHESYS.E-MAIL.COM