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How to I reinstall / overlay 2003 server OS

Answered How to I reinstall / overlay 2003 server OS

  • Thursday, March 07, 2013 8:48 PM
     
     
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    I have a 2003 server.

    The SAS raid card from dell died. I replaced the capacitors and it is now working.

    The system does not boot into OS. It just sort of sits there nothing on screen.

    I want to do an overlay/nondestructive reinstall. You know put CD in and go through untill it finds the Windows OS and then reinstall in place. Thus getting it up and going with little changes to the system. I have done this dozens of times on XP and a few on Windows without any problem.

    However when I boot from the CD it does not seem to find the original Windows install to do the reinstall.

    Normally it gets to a screen that says,  Repair I think But it does not.

    What it gets to is a screen that says.

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The following list shows the existing partitions and un-partitioned space on this computer.

    Use the UP and DOWN Arrow keys to select an item in the list.

    To set up Windows on the selected item, press ENTER.

    To create a partition in the un-partitioned space, press C

    To delete the selected partition, press D

    ============================================================

    Then it shows the various partitions.

    Utility partiion, C and D drives.

    Im not sure what happens if I press enter. Certainly I think this is not a repair install.

    I should say that when I go in through the recovery console all the files are there. So that drive data is still there for C: and D:

    But for some reason the install disk is not finding the last version of windows. How can I proceed from here to do a inplace install.

    thanks.

     

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  • Friday, March 08, 2013 1:24 AM
     
     
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    Hi

    You replaced yourselft some capacitor on the raid controller ?  How are you sure it work good now ?

    Array healthy in the boot process, do you see it in the raid controller bios

    If you boot with a boot cd, can you copy in exemple the data from the raid ?

    MCP | MCTS 70-236: Exchange Server 2007, Configuring

    Twitter - @yagmoth555 ()
    Blog: http://www.jabea.net | http://blogs.technet.com/b/wikininjas/

     
  • Friday, March 08, 2013 1:19 PM
     
     
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    .. How are you sure it work good now ?

    Array healthy in the boot process, do you see it in the raid controller bios

    If you boot with a boot cd, can you copy in exemple the data from the raid ?

    Hey Im not just a prety face. It is well known that the capacitors on the SAS5 conrollers go bad. Once I replaced them I put two different drives into the server set up mirror installed windows 2003 on the two different drives. IT works fine. Thats how I know the controller is now working :)

    Also the fact that I can go in through recovery console and see the files on the server proves that the Card is now working and functioning properly.

    Any ideas on how to have windows CD find the exising copy of windows on the server and so I can do an inplace install?

    Regards


    • Edited by stevwolf Friday, March 08, 2013 1:19 PM
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  • Friday, March 08, 2013 1:56 PM
     
     
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    Have you tried to F6 and supply the controller driver when starting RC? If your drive controller is not natively supported then you'll want to boot the Windows 2003 installation media. Then *F6* very early and very important (at setup is inspecting your system) in the setup to prevent drive controller detection, and select S to specify additional drivers. Then later you'll be prompted to insert the manufacturer supplied Windows 2003 driver for your drive controller in drive "A"

     

    Lastly you can try loading the controller driver from floppy. For the floppy to successfully boot Windows 2003 the disk must contain the "NT" boot sector. Format a diskette (on a Windows 2003 machine, not a DOS/Win9x, so the "NT" boot sector gets written to the floppy), then copy ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini to it. Edit the boot.ini to give it a correct ARC path for the machine you wish to boot.

    In order for this to work you'll want to change the arc path in boot.ini from multi syntax to scsi syntax to indicate that Windows 2003 will load a boot device driver and use that driver to access the boot partition. Then also copy the correct manufacturer controller driver to the floppy but renamed to ntbootdd.sys


    Something like this below (in case disk and or partition values have changed);

    [boot loader]
    timeout=10
    default=scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
    [operating systems]
    scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2003 0,1"
    scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2003 0,2"
    scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2003 1,1"
    scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2003 1,2"

     

     

     

    Regards, Dave Patrick ....
    Microsoft Certified Professional
    Microsoft MVP [Windows]

    Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

     
  • Friday, March 08, 2013 3:11 PM
     
     
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    The OS CD im using I slipstreamed in the past with the drivers for the raid card.

    Secondly, the fact that the install sees all the drive partiions eg Utility, C and D. means to me that it is seeing the drive. Normally when the drivers are not installed the Install cd will say "Cant find and drives" or something like that, because the Raid cards drivers are not loaded. So Im fairly certain that the drivers are installed, and recall above that I can get into the drives using the Recovery console. Again confirming that the raid card is working.

    I could use the option to use a floppy I suppose, maybe, but of course comptuers dont come with floppys anymore. Also even if I did boot up, it does not solve the problem of booting up the next time from the real partition, rather than the boot disk. Thats really why I want to do the soft install of the os.

    I suppose the question that Im asking is how does windows 2003 know that there is  or is not a previous install. This is the key question. I need to do something to make it see the previous install so that it can do a soft install. Does anyone know this, or am I off the mark.

    Regards

     
  • Friday, March 08, 2013 3:34 PM
     
     
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     Also even if I did boot up, it does not solve the problem of booting up the next time from the real partition, rather than the boot disk. Thats really why I want to do the soft install of the os.

    If it boots then you know you'll need to make repairs to the boot sector and or reinstall controller drivers. Its a shot in the dark. It really sounds like the file system has went south when the controller failed.

     

     

     

    Regards, Dave Patrick ....
    Microsoft Certified Professional
    Microsoft MVP [Windows]

    Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

     
  • Friday, March 08, 2013 3:43 PM
     
     
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    Hello,

    When you fixed the controller and installed the drives, did you install them in the correct order? The RAID controller should have prompted you with a 'foreign RAID' configuration detected and then you import the foreign RAID. Look in the RAID BIOS for the option to import a foreign RAID configuration to get your partition and OS install back.

    If you are not prompted with this option, you might be out of luck.

    You have RAID1, 5?

    If RAID1, you should be able to just plus the drive into a standard SAS/SATA port and read it that way to recover the data.

    If RAID5, there are plenty low-cost programs you can get to do RAID data recovery

    Simply installing windows on a separate folder will not do the trick since Windows cannot read your partition to begin with. That will only server to erase whatever data is on the drives.

    Miguel Fra | Falcon IT Services, Miami, FL
    www.falconitservices.com | www.falconits.com | Blog

     
  • Friday, March 08, 2013 3:56 PM
     
     
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    Hey Im not just a prety face. It is well known that the capacitors on the SAS5 conrollers go bad. Regards


    I think what surprised Yagmoth (and myself as well) is that most capacitors these days are multilayer ceramic capacitors and they require specialized equipment to remove. You can't just take a radio Shack soldering iron to them as they are very small.

    Miguel Fra | Falcon IT Services, Miami, FL
    Web Site | Blog

     
  • Friday, March 08, 2013 6:03 PM
     
     
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    I guess it all depends what you mean by file system gone south.

    The fact that I can read the files in recovery mode and if i boot from say bart pe,  means the file system is in tact and can be read fine.

    Its possible the mbr or something like that is bad. I could try to go into recovery mode and fix it I suppose.

     
  • Friday, March 08, 2013 6:07 PM
     
     
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    The raid is a mirror eg raid 1.

    It never prompted me about foreign raid. But the SAS bios says that the drives are synced and there is a virtual drive. This is the Dell expressong that you have a nice raid set up. I have actually never seen on this kind of raid card the term import foreign raid. Although I know what you are speaking about. I think I have also seen this when the raid is software raid ala windows (not sure about this).

    Again I believe the raid is fine since I can see all the data in recovery console. Its about windows not finding the OS to do a soft install that seems to be the problem. I just dont know what its looking for.

     
  • Friday, March 08, 2013 6:11 PM
     
     
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    if you can see the data in recovery console, you should add a secondary regular drive and copy the data to that drive as a backup before doing anything else.

    Miguel Fra | Falcon IT Services, Miami, FL
    Web Site | Blog

     
  • Friday, March 08, 2013 6:54 PM
     
     
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    Actually I have a full backup so I dont need to but thanks.
     
  • Friday, March 08, 2013 7:19 PM
     
     
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    I would re-apply the image on your c: driver IMO if you got a full backup. As the raid driver seem missing/faulty (as it load up from your bootable cd)

    Enable the boot logging too with F8, you will see after in the log (with the bootcd) on what driver it was waiting for indefinitly.

    Yes, to be honest I was surprised to see someone that repaired a controller :)  I would just stress it after the OS will be there to test the performance/stability (like if a multilayer board, some avanced feature might be broke because of the soldering is not ok at some point (but i did't studied in electronics, so you surelly know more than me on that matter))

    MCP | MCTS 70-236: Exchange Server 2007, Configuring

    Twitter - @yagmoth555 ()
    Blog: http://www.jabea.net | http://blogs.technet.com/b/wikininjas/


    • Edited by Yagmoth555 Friday, March 08, 2013 7:25 PM
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  • Friday, March 08, 2013 8:43 PM
     
     
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    I do think people are frightened of electronics. Its a bit of a black art I grant you. But frankly the people who build the cards are just using the same components I can buy from my store, (basically). Capacitors are probably the most common thing to go and are easily replaced. When they look a little bulging at the top then they may be going. A capacitor is really just a roll of tinfoil and paper basically. I think because people cant see into them and understand the multi layer nature of cards they think its magic. Its just a machanical device that relies upon physics. 

    I worked with Electrical Engineers for years. Its not rocket science, although I worked with them also.

    While I fully agree you need to be carfull, the fact is that I after my repair I  installed the exact same OS on separate drives on the same computer to test it out. This proves almost to a certaintly to me that the repair worked just fine. The new card is about 400 dollars. Sad that so many of these cards are going into the trash for the want of a cap. 60 Cents. I encourage others if you have a Sas 5 card from dell and it dies you have nothing to loose. Replace the caps. that are a little bulging (I only needed to replace one of two). You have nothing to loose because other than that its a garbage. Save 400 dollars, or the several days it will take to buy a new one.

    People seem to be over thinking this. I never that arragont to believe Im always right.  Some people on the news groups do, so I leave room for the host of more educated people around to correct me. But I think the card works. Ive proved it by installing a new os with it, by using it in Recovery mode and now by running in safe mode it is definetely reading files on the hard drive but then stops at a certain point. Which takes me to my next point...

    I F8'ed the system and tried to do a safe mode start and it reads many files perfectly then stops at system.log

    and gets stuck there.

    What this again proves to me I believe is that the drives are healthy and the raid card is working fine.

    Its possible that the registry is bad and thats why its stopping. But I dont know enough about that. However if the windows boot OS uses the registry to find the old OS that may? be why it is wanting to install windows from scratch.

    Is there a way to restore the registry from backup. What files would I restore?

    PS.

    While in reocovery console I tried to rebuild the mbr and ran checkdisk. everything ran fine. Still no boot.


    • Edited by stevwolf Friday, March 08, 2013 8:47 PM
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  • Friday, March 08, 2013 9:14 PM
     
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    In recovery mode try this :) (if the file exist, but they should, took from there; http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545) tagged for XP, but the file are the same in 2003 if I remember correctly)

    md tmp
    copy c:\windows\system32\config\system c:\windows\tmp\system.bak
    copy c:\windows\system32\config\software      c:\windows\tmp\software.bak
    copy c:\windows\system32\config\sam c:\windows\tmp\sam.bak
    copy c:\windows\system32\config\security      c:\windows\tmp\security.bak
    copy c:\windows\system32\config\default      c:\windows\tmp\default.bak

    delete c:\windows\system32\config\system
    delete c:\windows\system32\config\software
    delete c:\windows\system32\config\sam
    delete c:\windows\system32\config\security
     delete c:\windows\system32\config\default

    copy c:\windows\repair\system c:\windows\system32\config\system
    copy c:\windows\repair\software      c:\windows\system32\config\software
    copy c:\windows\repair\sam c:\windows\system32\config\sam
    copy c:\windows\repair\security      c:\windows\system32\config\security
    copy c:\windows\repair\default      c:\windows\system32\config\default

    Else in the backup you could recover those file too, and copy them over

    MCP | MCTS 70-236: Exchange Server 2007, Configuring

    Twitter - @yagmoth555 ()
    Blog: http://www.jabea.net | http://blogs.technet.com/b/wikininjas/

     
  • Monday, March 11, 2013 3:16 PM
     
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    I wanted to get back to the group as I have fixed my problem.

    The reason the system was not booting I think was that the registry was bad. I think that the 2003 boot cd could not find the OS so it could not do a soft overlay install was becasue it could not read the registry. (this is a guess on my part)

    Soon after I send my last email I booted from Hirens boot disk. Then I used the Registry/Registry Restore Wizard v1.04 by viceroy and restored the registry.

    The machine booted up and lo and behold instead of it just sitting here with a blank expression, It booted up and started loading the settings, and eventually started up.

    Strangely when it did boot I could not use the mouse or keyboard. But being friday I left it till today and now both work. If they did not work, (for the keeners int he group) I would have then used VNC or Remote desktopy to get into the machine and then load the drivers. Happily I didnt need this.

    Thanks the last poster who gave me the list of items to get back the registry. I may cut and paste that into my help files for future reference.

    I think that this solution will only work on xp/windows 2003 OS's newver versions may not work.

    This machine was our file server, Domain controller and DHCP. As I say I did have a backup but its nice to try to resolve these things to test your metal.

    Thanks all.



     
  • Thursday, March 14, 2013 9:09 AM
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    Hi,

    I’m glad to hear that you have resolved the issue and thanks for sharing your solution in the forum. If there is anything else I can do for you, please do not hesitate to let me know and I will be very happy to help.

    Best Regards,

    Andy Qi

    Andy Qi
    TechNet Community Support