Win Server 2008 Boot Disc Failure

Question

Over the weekend our server restarted and when I came in this morning it is saying Boot Disc Failure. Please insert system disc and press enter. If I press enter and do not put in the disc it will get to the Windows loading screen...pause for about 30 seconds than restarts and goes back to the Disc Boot Failure message. So I am not sure if this is an mbr problem or if the drive is going bad or the installation is corrupt?

I am burning a copy of the installation disc now if it is an mbr problem and that hsould be a simple fix when I can repair the mbr.

If the hard drive is bad is there anyway I can pull our MSSql server and active directory data off of it?

If the installation is corrupt is there a way to reinstall the OS without losing the data on the C:\ Drive?

Thanks

Answer 1

I'll answer your last question first. If Windows is corrupt you can use the installation disk to either repair it or install a new copy of Windows. If you do the latter your data should be intact, but none of your applications or service will work correctly as you have a fresh registry. If the drive is bad you may be able to get data of it, if you can read it on another machine or send it to a specialist.

However, the bottom line here is that you are very likely going to need to restore some data from backup, you do have backups right?

You mention Active Directory, is this your only Domain Controller? If not then you can replicate AD from another DC and that's not such a big issue, if it is the only DC then you are likely going to need to recover AD from backup unless you can repair the MBR.

If this your only domain controller and you do get it to boot of that disk I'm not sure I would trust it for more than getting a second DC up and replicating the data off it.