SBS 2008 Restore issues

Evening people, I normally snoop around GD but today I really need some help.

I have just had to do a full system restore on a SBS 2008 box after a HDD failure, the machine was running fine until the drive failed and no one had any active directory or logon issues.

The drive was replaced and the full computer backup (a VHD from what I can see) was restored, the machine came up, has all the data, knows it should be a domain controller, DHCP server, has the correct IP etc. As far as I am concerned this is a literal copy of the machine from a few days ago and therefore should restore and come back up 'as was'.

The issue lies in that it now doesn't know about its own domain, I can't access anything in Active Directory as it says the domain is unavailable, I can't put the machine in as a domain controller as there is no domain.

However if I try to do a DCPROMO the machine does know it is a domain controller and that if it is removed it is the last domain controller (it is the only one).

For the life of me I cannot figure out how it has restored everything else except for the knowledge of its own domain.

Please help, I have been tearing my hair out, it would be nice to fix it as opposed to starting again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 99Flake

Evening people, I normally snoop around GD but today I really need some help.

I have just had to do a full system restore on a SBS 2008 box after a HDD failure, the machine was running fine until the drive failed and no one had any active directory or logon issues.

The drive was replaced and the full computer backup (a VHD from what I can see) was restored, the machine came up, has all the data, knows it should be a domain controller, DHCP server, has the correct IP etc. As far as I am concerned this is a literal copy of the machine from a few days ago and therefore should restore and come back up 'as was'.

The issue lies in that it now doesn't know about its own domain, I can't access anything in Active Directory as it says the domain is unavailable, I can't put the machine in as a domain controller as there is no domain.

However if I try to do a DCPROMO the machine does know it is a domain controller and that if it is removed it is the last domain controller (it is the only one).

For the life of me I cannot figure out how it has restored everything else except for the knowledge of its own domain.

Please help, I have been tearing my hair out, it would be nice to fix it as opposed to starting again.

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What do the event logs say?

Did you restore the DC from Directory services restore mode?

Is the netlogon service running?

In my experience, when there are AD problems this, the event logs tell you exactly what the problem is and often they tell you how to fix it as well.