Windows 2000 Professional Backup and Recovery

From: Sigdel, Dhruba R
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 8:44 AM
To: 'nepalifren.blogspot.com'
Subject: Windows 2000 Professional Backup and Recovery

Recovery Console:
Now that you have installed Windows 2000, you should immediately take steps to protect your installation by installing the Recovery Console. Recovery Console is similar to the emergency repair disk in NT 4.0, but with many functionality enhancements. Recovery Console will allow you to You can start and stop services, read and write data on a local drive (including drives formatted with the NTFS file system), copy data from a floppy disk or CD, format drives, fix the boot sector or master boot record, and perform other administrative tasks. With Windows NT 4.0, many administrators would create a FAT partition that would allow them to boot to a DOS prompt. The recovery console eliminates the need to create a FAT partition for this purpose.

Recovery Console is set up as follows:
Insert the installation CD and switch to the I386 directory. Type C:\>winnt32 /cmdcons. When asked for confirmation, answer "yes". The file will be copied to the hard disk. After rebooting the computer you will be able to select "Microsoft Windows 2000 Command Console" and start Windows 2000 in command mode. You will be prompted for a Windows 2000 installation that you wish to repair and will be prompted for the Adminstrator password. Once you are in, there is a wide variety of commands that you will be able to perform. Type HELP for a list of all of the commands. Some of the more important commands are:

• DISKPART - Similar to fdisk
• LISTSVC - Lists services
• ENABLE/DISABLE - Enable/disable service or driver
• FIXBOOT - Create a new boot sector on the system partition
• FIXMBR - Repairs master boot record
• MAP - Shows a list of drives and ARC paths.
• LOGON - Choose which installation to work with

Backup:
The Backup program has been greatly enhanced in order to support Active Directory and a much wider variety of backup media including removable disks, network drives, logical drives and tape devices are now supported. Another nice feature is that an integrated scheduling option has been added which relieves the need to use AT or other scheduling utility. For more in depth information on backing up Windows 2000, read our tutorial Backing Up and Restoring Windows 2000.
Other:
Windows 2000 has several other utilities to aid in the event of a failure, many of which are included in "Advanced Options" which are accessed by pressing F8 at the boot menu. In order to troubleshoot failures, it is a good idea to understand the boot process which occurs in the following steps:

1. Power-on self test (POST)
2. Initial startup
3. Bootstrap loader process
4. Select operating system
5. Detecting hardware
6. Selecting a configuration
7. Loading and initializing the kernel(Ntoskrnl.exe)
8. Log on

The boot process requires the following files:

File	Location
NTLDR	Active Partition
Boot.ini	Active Partition
Ntdetect.com	Active Partition
Ntoskrnl.exe	%SystemRoot%\System32
Hal.dll	%SystemRoot%\System32
SYSTEM key	%SystemRoot%\System32\Config
Device drivers	%SystemRoot%\System32\Drivers

Ntbootdd.sys is required only if you are using a SCSI-controlled boot partition, and the SCSI adapter does not have a SCSI BIOS enabled. Bootsect.dos is required only for multiple booting.

When working with the boot.ini file, you need to understand ARC naming conventions. ARC is an architecture-independant way of naming drives for x86, risc, alpha, etc. NT uses this convention in its boot.ini file to determine which disk holds the OS. The table below will explain the different options.

Multi(x)	Specifies an EIDE disk or a SCSI disk if the bios is enabled to detect it. Can only be used on x86 systems. "x" is the number of the controller.
SCSI(x)	Defines a SCSI controller if the BIOS is not enabled to do so. Again, "x" is the number of the controller.
Disk(x)	Defines which SCSI disk the OS is on. If SCSI(x) was used then x=the SCSI ID of the drive. If Multi(x) was used then x=0.
Rdisk(x)	Defines disk which the OS is on when it is on an EIDE disk. x=0-1 if on primary controller. x=2-3 if on multi-channel EIDE controller.
Partition(x)	Specifies the partition that the operating system is located on. (x)=the partition's number.

Below are the various recovery tools included in Windows 2000.

·  ERD - Emergency Repair Disk. The RDISK utility found in NT 4.0 is gone. An ERD is now created using the ntbackup utility and no longer backs up registry data.

·  Enable VGA Mode - Located in the advanced options menu, this utility allows one to fix display settings or drivers that have caused the display to become unviewable.

·  Last Known Good Configuration - Tells Windows 2000 to forget any changes that you have made since the previous boot, by looking for the last configuration that did not cause system critical errors at boot. Good to try if you have made a change to the system and then rebooted with problems.

·  Safe Mode - Loads a minimal version of Windows 2000 with only the drivers needed to boot the computer. Because this option does not load any network services or drivers, it is a good tool to use when you suspect that the problem lies in this area.

·  Safe Mode With Networking - Same as Safe Mode, but includes networking support.

·  Safe Mode With Command Prompt - Safe Mode in which EXPLORER.EXE is replaced by CMD.EXE. From the command prompt it is still possible to run Explorer and other GUI applications from a command line. No networking support in this mode.