How to cancel windows server 2003 repair install

active-directorydisaster-recoverydomain-controllerwindows-server-2003

System: Windows 2003 Server Enterprise
Scenario: NTDS db is corrupt and all attempts to fix with esentutl fail.
Ran chkdsk which seemed to repair disk error and give access to the ntds.dit file but still esentutl fails.
(Attached the drive to a different server to run the esentutl)

Error:

Access to source database '[path to copy of]/ntds.dit' failed with Jet
error -1022.

Operation terminated with error -1022 (JET_errDiskIO, Disk IO error)
after 0.170 seconds.

This error occurs on any disk I copy the files to including
original location in C:\WINDOWS\NTDS\

Now enter the "Stupid!" and "what was I thinking!?" part (must be the late hour…)

Stupid: No updated backup – after using a backup I get a network password error in the lsass error.

what was I thinking!?: Started the install repair from the original CD but the install fails since the AD fails to start.

Now I cant boot into any mode (safe mode, AD restore etc) nor complete the repair install.

I would really like to avoid a fresh install since I have the Exchange server on this DC and would rather migrate to a new server than have to start from scratch.

Best Answer

It sure sounds to me that you're completely screwed. If you can't restore from backup and can't get the system online, then you're out of luck. In the future, you should take this as a lesson to:

  1. Take good backups
  2. Test your backups
  3. Not run Exchange (or other services) on a Domain Controller
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