Paul Schnackenburg31 August 2006, 6:16 AM
Sooner or later something goes wrong with a server. Sometimes that means it won't boot properly -- what do you do then? Longhorn server has a few new secrets in this department.
Sooner or later something goes wrong with a server. Sometimes that means it won’t boot properly -- what do you do then?
Longhorn Server has a few new secrets in this department.
If your Windows server doesn’t boot properly, the F8 key is your friend. This brings up the Advanced Boot Options menu which has a few new options. It also displays a sentence explaining each option as you highlight it -- nice.
The first one is Enable low-resolution video (640 x 480). This is not Safe Mode, mind you; just boot with a plain VGA driver. This will come in handy the times when you know it’s the video driver playing up and you’ll need to rollback to an earlier driver version. Safe Mode, on the other hand, boots with minimal drivers across the board.
Another new option that’ll come in handy in a specific situation is Disable automatic restart on system failure. Have you ever been “in the loop”? A driver crashes Windows on startup and because the default in Windows is “Automatically restart on system failure” it keeps crashing and then rebooting.
The final new member is Disable Driver Signature Enforcement which can also be a blood pressure saver in the right situation. In Windows Longhorn Server (as well as in Windows Vista 64 bit) the default is to never allow installation of unsigned drivers. This will be a way of working around that limitation when absolutely necessary.
If none of the options in F8 are able to save your server, the next step is to boot from the installation CD. As in earlier versions of Windows this recovery environment can also be installed on a hidden partition on the system. A lot of work has been done here and once you click System Recovery you’re presented with a list of operating systems. If you need to load third party RAID / storage drivers just press the button (no more F6). This option also lets you access CD/DVD drives as well as USB devices, provided your BIOS supports access to USB drives without the full OS running.
Once you’ve selected which OS you need to fix the next menu presents several new options.
Startup repair checks your boot environment and attempts to fix any discrepancies with a minimum of user interaction.
System Restore is a very welcome addition, today only available in Windows XP, not on Windows Server. The ability to “do the time warp” [apologies to Apple] and go back to an earlier state of the entire system without touching your user data is certain to be a favourite in many a recovery scenario.
CompletePC Restore is also new; this depends on you having done a complete system backup with the new backup tool prior to the failure. Given the new “image-based” installation nature of Longhorn Server and Windows Vista, it’ll be interesting to see how third party imaging / disaster recovery software vendors cope with the competition from tools in the OS itself.
The Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool that’s available in the normal GUI is also part of the recovery tools for obvious reasons.
Finally, the Command Prompt gives you a full CMD prompt for all the file-based recovery you’d like to accomplish.
One of the coolest things about this new recovery environment is that third party vendors can expand on this toolset with their own plug-ins - something that wasn’t possible before.