Disaster recovery disaster

[tman138]

I am running WIN2K3 Standard on a Dell Poweredge 2950 with Perc5/i RAID and Veritas Backup Exec 10. After applying a Microsoft security patch (I'm not sure which one) and rebooting I was confronted with a NTLDR not found error.
I have both a daily incremental and full backup on LTO tape from the previous day. I also have an 'intelligent disaster recovery' ISO image file from the full backup saved on another network PC. While I had performed test restores of individulal files, I had never tested a complete restore form the ISO image file, as I did not want to go through refomatting the hard disk as part of routine testing. I retrospect perhaps I should have. Anyhow, when I tried to boot using the ISO disc, I got through the first prompt telling me to enter the WIN2K3 startup disc, but It then prompted me to load the image disk 'floppy' in the 'a' drive & of course I have no floppy drive. Is there a way to redirect the path to the CD drive? I would really like to restore from this image file.

I moved on to plan B which was to completely reinstall Windows, and Backup Exec. I then booted in Active Directory restore mode and ran restore of system state and my directory structure and files. This proved only somewhat complete. All of the files came back, but system state is incomplete. Many installed programs are not registered, and I am panicking.

I run this machine as a terminal server with Office shared and an enterprise application running. Neither of which are currently registered / installed. I tried to repair the McAfee installation but the .net 2.0 framework installation was not registered, I tried reinstalling it with the other Microsoft patches, but only some repaired/ reinstalled sucsessfully. I also get a 80130700 error running the mmc for GPO so I am contemplating re-installing everything again.

Can anyone suggest the best way to get back to where I was?

 

[lb63640]

In retrospect, you could have done a parallel Windows install to fix the NTLDR problem at the boot.ini level.

I'm sure someone will have a fix for you. Hang in there!

 

[steveot]

How are you running the restore job. Are you using re-direction of any kind in the job setup?

 

[steveot]

Also, was the machine a windows 2000 server then upgraded to 2003 at one point? If that is the case its looking to restore the files back to c:\winnt and not c:\windows which you probably installed the fresh OS as

 

[tman138]

Restore job was run by first re-installing Backup Exec, copying the catalog from a network resource back to the server, restarting in Active directory or directory restore mode ( whatever it's called) and running the restore from tape.
No redirection was employed

 

[steveot]

Did the restore job complete? In you restore selection do you see c:\winnt or C:\windows?

If the restore completed then everything should be back providing you backed up everything ..unless as I stated before the system dir was winnt

 

[tman138]

Original install was WIN2K3 in c:\windows after restore all files restored sucesfully, but installed programs were not registered. My plan now is to reinstall O/S and patches first, then reinstall apps. I'll backup that config and then try restore for directory structure. Again backup and then try system state restore. I'll let you know how it goes.