Server 2003 has a nifty new Recovery Console that can go miles farther than the old methods of fixing broken installations. Take this scenario—one that I’ve dealt with numerous times. An impor- tant system file gets corrupted…umm, deleted. You know how it goes, “Let’s see, NTFS.SYS, I never
use NTFS.SYS, let’s just delete it to make more space.” The next time you reboot, the system won’t
come up. Go figure. Now you need to copy a new NTFS.SYS to your hard disk. You make a bootable
floppy, put NTFS.SYS on it, reboot to the floppy, and find out that your system partition is NTFS.
We all know that you can’t boot to a DOS floppy and access an NTFS partition. Enter the Recovery Console.
What is the Recovery Console? It is a scaled-down cross between a DOS command-line environ- ment, certain Server 2003 Setup functions, and partition-correcting utilities, all with the capability to access NTFS partitions.
The first thing you need to do is get into the Recovery Console. There are two ways to do this. First, you can launch the WINNT32 Setup program with the /cmdcons parameter. A brief setup routine and file-copying session will take place to create your console. Once completed, your boot.ini
will reflect a new operating system selection, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Command Console. Simply boot your machine and then select that menu item. Of course, this method would only work if you had the foresight to install the console before the system broke down. If you haven’t created it ahead of time, don’t worry, you can get there from the normal setup routine.
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Launch Setup as you normally would—from the CD, the boot floppies, whatever you prefer. At the Welcome to Setup screen, select the Repair option. From there, you will get the option to repair your installation using either the emergency repair process or the Recovery Console, and off you go.
Once you enter the console, you get a selection of all Server 2003 installations on the system. Enter the number of the installation you want to work on and press Enter.
Note When entering the console from Setup, you go straight into the console. When entering the console from your boot
menu, you’ll need to press F6 at the Press F6 prompt to install SCSI drivers. This will let you access your SCSI hard drives or CD-ROMs that require a driver.
The next step is validation. One of the major differences between the FAT and NTFS filesystems is security. Even though you can see the NTFS partitions now, you still need to have access to the filesystem. The console will ask you to enter the Administrator password. After you enter the password, you are dropped at a command prompt in the systemroot directory of the installation you chose. Simple!
Well, now what? You’re at this command prompt. What do you do with a command-prompt-only version of Server 2003? Start off with a HELP command, which shows you a list of all available commands. You can do things like copy files, change directories, format drives, and other typical DOS-like file operations. To resolve the current problem, you just copy your NTFS.SYS from your
floppy to your Windows Server 2003 installation folder and you should be back in business. In addition, there are some other commands that can help you get your server back up and running:
DISKPART This command will launch a disk partitioning utility almost identical to the utility we used during the text-based phase of setup.
FIXBOOT This command will make a new boot sector on your drive of choice and make that
partition your new boot partition. If you happened to destroy your boot sector information and can’t boot at all, this may be your best bet.
FIXMBR This command will repair the master boot record on the selected drive.
DISABLE If you are having problems with a device that is not letting Server boot completely—let’s say you accidentally changed a device’s startup parameter or installed a new service that keeps killing your system—the DISABLE command will let you prevent that service or device from starting.
ENABLE This is just the opposite of DISABLE. Let’s say you disabled an important boot
device; reenabling it may be the easiest solution.
LISTSVC Both the DISABLE and ENABLE commands require that you tell it which service or
device to alter. This command will give you a list of all devices and services.
SYSTEMROOT This command gives you a quick return path back to your systemroot directory
without having to fight those long, pesky CD commands. It also helps you when you forget which drive and directory your chosen Server 2003 installation resides in.
LOGON The logon command takes you back to your first prompt of the Recovery Console so
you can choose another installation to repair.
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Now that you know what the Recovery Console does, let’s run through a couple of examples. We’ll take the first example from our earlier scenario, a known missing or corrupt NTFS.SYS. Once
we’ve logged in to the Recovery Console for our Server installation and copied a fresh NTFS.SYS to
our A: drive, we need to copy it to our systemroot directory. We should already be in the systemroot
directory, but just to be sure, we type systemroot. Now, we type copy A:\NTFS.SYS. Easy, huh? Here’s another problem. We have recently installed a new service named RudysNeatVirusScanner. It is set to start automatically during boot up, but as soon as it does, blue screen! Into our Recovery Console we go. At the prompt, type listsvc. We should see, among our many devices and services, RudysNeatVirusScanner service set to automatic. Now, we type disable RudysNeatVirusScanner. Next time we reboot into Server, we should get in just fine and should probably uninstall the problem software.
The Recovery Console is a handy utility that can get you out of a lot of trouble. Once you have installed Server 2003, it might not be a bad idea to run the winnt32.exe with the /cmdcons parameter.
This won’t actually launch Setup, just configure the console. You will always have the console available in your boot menu, although it won’t be set as default.