Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

If you have a Windows Server running Active Directory, typically in a business environment or maybe Small Business Server in a small company, you may someday have to boot into Directory Services Restore Mode.

Just in case you might have to, I suggest a trial run when nothing is wrong.

BACKUP FIRST!

If you need to reset Directory Services Restore Mode Administrator Account Password because you don’t know what it is, then check out this short how-to article from our friends at Microsoft here.

The next tip is in case you have renamed the Administrator account for the Domain for security purposes to something other than Administrator, keep in mind that in Directory Services Restore Mode the user name is still “Administrator”.

Take notes and have them available in case you ever need it.

With Windows operating systems it is common practice to have to reboot the server or workstation from time to time just to straighten things out. Add to that the times you reboot because you installed or updated a program and you can be rebooting quite often.

Don’t Touch That Dial!

I think the narrator in the TV version of Batman used to yell that out, but I could be wrong. What I mean is this: Don’t reboot without considering that the computer may not come up after the reboot.

When was your last backup?

Before you reboot, make a quick backup of at least the work you know has changed since your last good backup. Also think about your contingency plan in case the server or workstation chooses not to come alive again.

It’s just a fact with computer hardware that any time it’s running, it might be the last time. Does this happen frequently? Thankfully, no. But over the last couple of decades I have received enough frantic calls when it hasn’t to warrant mentioning it here.

Then there is the Windows operating system.

Just last week a client called me to say that their Windows 2000 server had a BSOD (blue screen of death) with 0×0000007B “Inaccessible Boot Device” on the screen. Not good.

Everything was working just fine except that a vendor support person couldn’t get in with pcAnywhere (an old as the hills remote control program). Why they haven’t joined the 21st century by using a product like PCNow for tech support access is beyond me. So, without thinking about the last 3 nights backups that did NOT complete successfully, they rebooted.

After spending about 3 hours following all of Microsoft’s suggestions and Googling for any other hints, I punted. With a Windows Server 2003 CD at arms reach I couldn’t justify spending any more time trying to fix Windows 2000.

Fortunately, Windows 2000 Server was all that was corrupt; the data was all good (sigh of relief here). This is a client that does NOT hire me to monitor their server and such items as backup - that may change. A new Dell PowerEdge Server has also been ordered.

So before you click on Start | Shutdown | Restart - ask yourself what you will do if it doesn’t restart; and do a quick backup first.

One rather effective way of keeping your computer clean and uninfected is to block access to known bad sites via the hosts file.

Since this is very well described on MVPS.org I won’t repeat it here.

With a little ingenuity, sysadmins can even automate the collecting of the updated file daily and distribute it to all client computers via the login script.

Here is a warning though: If you use a large hosts file on your servers, don’t use DCPromo without temporarily renaming the file.

DCPromo will CRASH and reboot your server 30 seconds later if a large hosts file exists! I found this out the hard way some time ago. It took a $295 phone call to Microsoft Tech Support where I had to try to understand India’s version of English for about 10 hours over a 5 day period.

I had to download numerous utilities, zip several dump files and send to Microsoft, and basically ruin a week of my time. Finally, I got the problem escalated to a supervisor (still from India) and she figured it out in about 20 minutes; seemingly without the help of all the work that had been done beforehand.

Running a hosts file that large can be a benefit for security purposes, but be forewarned that DCPromo can’t handle it.

Windows Home Server is advancing on track and due out sometime this fall.

My prediction: It won’t be just for the home.

I can see this product ending up in small offices where maybe an attorney or two and a secretary or two might finally get serious about sharing files and backing up data.

These offices probably could afford me to come in with Microsoft Small Business Server, it would offer them a lot of advantages. But many of these professionals are just too cheap for that. I’m sorry, stingy; I mean frugal. You get the idea. (They use Yahoo! email accounts, now that’s professiona!)

Where Small Business Server is designed to be easy to manage, Windows Home Server is designed to require practically no management at all.

Will it deliver on this goal? I think it has a good chance. Doesn’t mean they won’t call someone like me every few months to check on it or answer a question, but it will probably run unattended in a closet quite nicely.

It will probably be the first time these offices have had anything close to a proper storage of their data.

Note: This applies to servers that are domain controllers, but if you get this error on a workstation, try the fix anyway.

I have written about the value of a system state backup, but what do you do when it fails with some arcane error message?

From what I found, this error comes from a bug in Server 2003 SP1. If you are trying JUST a system state backup, try including 1 small file from each drive on the system. Usually occurs if you have taken the prudent step of placing the NTFS log files on a different drive than the database.