DR 2: Recovering Your Windows NT 4.0 System - Procedure 2

1. Contact Customer Service to inform them that you are starting a disaster recovery.

   Disaster recovery requires actions by both you and by Customer Service. Customer Service will discuss the situation with you and prepare a disaster recovery plan to meet your needs. For example, you will discuss:

1. Will the data and registry be delivered on media (Network Attached Storage or CD-ROM), or over the Internet? This depends on the amount of data being restored and your Internet connection bandwidth. In some instances, if the amount of data is small and your bandwidth is sufficient, you may have the data restored over the Internet.

   If your data and registry will be delivered over the Internet, then Customer Service will create a new LiveVault Agent kit for the failed system (as required to perform the Internet restores).

   Customer Service will request that you submit a media DR restore request if together you are unable to determine which delivery method to use. The initial processing of the restore request will provide additional information that they can use to help this decision.

2. Do you want to restore the most current version of the data or a historical version?

3. Hardware configuration of the recovering system compared to the original system. Windows NT 4.0 is not tolerant of hardware differences between the recovering and original systems. This procedure requires that the hardware configuration of the recovering system be identical to that of the original system.

2. Suspend backup for the recovering system (so that backup does not start again until the disaster recovery is complete). Follow the steps in the MyLiveVault Help topic Suspending Backup.

3. If your data and registry will be delivered on media, or if the delivery method has not been determined, submit a Media disaster recovery request in MyLiveVault. Follow the steps in the MyLiveVault Help topic Restoring My Entire Computer on Media.

4. Promote one of the Backup Domain Controllers to Primary Domain Controller. This system will be used to send the latest Security Accounts Manager (SAM) database to the offline Primary Domain Controller (which is the system you are recovering).

5. On the recovering system, install Windows NT 4.0 to a different directory from the one used on the original system (this may be on the same or different volume). For example, if the original installation directory was C:\Winnt, install Windows NT 4.0 to D:\Winnt2.

6. Configure the recovering system as follows:

• Use the same computer name and host name as the original system.

• Use the same set of NTFS and FAT partitions as the original system.

• Select Secondary Domain Controller as the security role.

• Install the same networking options as the original system, such as TCP/IP and NETBIOS.

7. Install the appropriate Windows NT Service Pack on the recovering system.

8. Upgrade Internet Explorer to version 4 or newer. You can download Internet Explorer for free from Microsoft, at www.microsoft.com/windows/ie.

9. If your data and registry are to be restored over the Internet for this disaster recovery, then install the LiveVault Agent software on the recovering system. You will receive an e-mail from the LiveVault Online Backup Service when the LiveVault Agent software kit is available for you to download from MyLiveVault and install on the recovering system. Follow the instructions in the e-mail.

   If your data and registry are to be restored on media, skip this step.

   Note: During the LiveVault Agent software installation, a Microsoft runtime DLL is installed, requiring a system restart. After the recovering system restarts, manually restart the LiveVault setup program.

10. Make a copy of the boot.ini file (located in the recovering system's root directory). We strongly recommend that you name the copy something similar to BootFromCD_101503.ini (where 101503 represents the current date) to ensure there is no confusion between the copy and the restored boot.ini file, and to differentiate this copy from any other copies you may make.

    Important: This copy will be referenced later during the disaster recovery, so note the copy's name.

11. Restore all the original system's data to the recovering system. The steps involved depend on how your restored data is being delivered:

• Restored on media: The media contains all the data and the registry from the original system.

  A document explaining how to restore from the media to your computer was provided in the media package (the document is also available from the help topic Restoring Your Data from Media). Follow the steps in that document except for the restore data option and do not restart the system. Instead, you must use the following restore option and restart option:

• On the Select Restore Data dialog, choose the Disaster recovery (restore the entire computer) option.

  This option will restore all of the data and the registry to the recovering system.

  The data (files/directories) are restored to their original locations, overwriting existing files on the recovering system (open files will be overwritten after the system is restarted later).

  The registry is written to a temporary location on the recovering system's current boot volume:

  x:\orig-windows-dir\system32\config\$NIRegistryBackup$\*.*

  Where:

  x = the recovering system's current boot volume (for example, D:\)

  orig-windows-dir= the original system's Windows NT directory

  Important: Failure to select the Disaster recovery option could result in the disaster recovery failing.

• After the restore job (both data and registry) completes, do not restart the system.

• Restored over the Internet: Customer Service will restore the data and registry over the Internet to the recovering system; this will be done in two steps. Do not restore the data or registry yourself using MyLiveVault.

1. Customer Service will restore all the data (e.g., everything except the registry) over the Internet to the recovering system.

   You will receive an e-mail from the LiveVault Online Backup Service when the data restore job completes.

   Important: After the data restore job completes, do not restart the system.

2. After the data restore completes, contact Customer Service and request that they restore the original system's registry over the Internet to the recovering system.

   Important: When Customer Service informs you that the registry restore is complete, do not restart the system.

Note: This step will replace the version of the LiveVault Agent software on the recovering system with the version previously backed up from the original system.

12. Copy all the restored registry files from the restored location on the recovering system to the registry directory:

    (from) x:\orig-windows-dir\system32\config\$NIRegistryBackup$\*.*

    (to) y:\orig-windows-dir\system32\config\

    Where:

    x = the recovering system's current boot volume (e.g., D:\)

    y = the original system's boot volume (e.g., C:\)

    orig-windows-dir = the original system's Windows NT directory

    Ensure that you do this after the registry restore is complete, and that you are copying all the files that are in the $NIRegistryBackup$ subdirectory (that is, the restored location).

    Important: Do not restart the recovering system yet.

13. Compare the restored boot.ini file and the copy of the boot.ini file:

1. Go to the computer's root directory, and open both the restored boot.ini file (e.g., boot.ini) and the copy of the boot.ini file (e.g., BootFromCD_101503.ini) that you made earlier in this procedure.

2. Compare the boot drive value (i.e., the number of the partition that the computer will boot from, for example partition(1)):

   • If the boot drive values in these files match, then skip to Step 14.

   • If the boot drive values in these files do not match, then continue this procedure.

3. The restored boot.ini file's (e.g., boot.ini) read-only attribute is set. Clear the read-only attribute:

1. In Windows Explorer, navigate to and select the file.

2. Right-click the file and click Properties on the short-cut menu.

3. In the Properties dialog box, on the General tab, in the Attributes group, clear the Read-only checkbox. Then click OK.

4. Change the value in the restored boot.ini (e.g., boot.ini) to match the value specified in the copy of the boot.ini file (e.g., BootFromCD_101503.ini).

   Depending on your boot.ini configuration, you may have to update the boot drive value for multiple lines in the restored boot.ini file.

   Important: If you fail to update the restored boot.ini file, you may be unable to restart the computer.

14. Restart the recovering system.

    Important: If the recovering system does not restart, contact Customer Service for assistance.

    If the recovering system restarts but a message is displayed indicating that a service did not start, check the Windows Event Viewer for the following error (where the specified volume may be different):

    Event ID: 1030
    Source: LiveVault
    The service failed to initialize. : Initialization failed. : File system error: Unable to create directory 'D:\LiveVault\Journals\Outbound\' (NT error code The system cannot find the path specified.).

    If you see this error, start the LiveVault service:

    1. On the Desktop, click Start and select Settings and then Control Panel.

    2. In the Control Panel, double-click Services.

    3. In the Services window, locate the LiveVault service and right-click on it.

    4. From the pop-up menu, select Start. This will start the LiveVault service. Wait for the Service Control dialog box to confirm that the service has started.

15. Windows NT reports that there is already a Primary Domain Controller on the network and that the Net Logon Service will not start. To correct this problem:

1. Start the NT Server Manager on the recovering system.

2. Demote the recovering system to a Backup Domain Controller.

3. Synchronize the recovering system with the current Primary Domain Controller.

4. Promote the recovering system to be the Primary Domain Controller.

16. Test the recovered system. For example:

• Examine Event Viewer logs.

• Ensure the Primary Domain Controller is on the network.

• Load your applications on the Primary Domain Controller and make sure they work.

17. Inform Customer Service that the disaster recovery is complete and that the recovered system is working successfully.

18. Resume backup for the recovered system, and verify that the backup configurations are running according to their schedules. Follow the steps in the MyLiveVault Help topic Resuming Backup.