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Windows 2003SB not booting

S

Schoolies

Senior member
My Windows 2003 with a SATA raid controller will not boot since this morning. It gets past the "loading Windows 2003" and then goes to black but before it loads the regular login screen, it goes to the wonderful blue background with white text error message screen.

The error is so fast I can't get a good read out of it but it says something about "bad image - kernal32.dll error"

I've tried booting in every available option given to me when I press F8 and I've tried to repair the OS but I am not given that option - it just begins a new installation.

At the very least I would like to be able to access my SATA mirrored drives to get the data off and then just reinstall 2003 Small Business Edition.

Help!
 
You are probably going to want to publish a lot more details if you want useful help in doing a repair. Is the data on the same disk as the System? On the same partition? What kind of RAID controller are we talking about here? The best recovery technique will vary depending upon the drive configuration.

What is the state of your system backups?

In the meantime, if you are a Microsoft Partner, you can get free assistance in recovering your SBS Server. Otherwise, it's $245 for unlimited MS support in getting it running.
 
The system disk has Microsoft Exchange data which is not mission critical - the other partition has the important data. It is a RAID FastTrakk 2200 running two 160GB Maxtor SATA.

I was able to remove one drive and attach it to my laptop and retrieve the important data but I'm trying to figure out how to save the operating system - prevent from having to do a reinstall. Any ideas?
 
if you think Exchange data is not mission critical, you have never recovered MS Exchange which must be done in a very specific way

i'm glad i have nothing to do with it anymore
 
Thanks for your constructive post alent.

The Exchange server was rarely used, internal mail only and all workstations have local pst files. All the data has been backed up off the server so I have their mission critical files available to the users now. Let's not worry about Exchange - I just do not want to reinstall the OS if there is another solution someone has already come across.

I look forward to hearing from anyone who has a suggestion on how to fix this OS problem.

Thanks.
 
the biggest PITA with exchange is you can reroll the box with the same name but once you rejoin the domain the computer account SID changes and you won't be able to mount the databases. i heard if you call PSS there is a method they can run you through, but it's going to cost $245 and I'm not 100% sure it's going to work.

where i work we do daily full system state backups of exchange servers on tape and disk

have you tried booting with the CD in that special mode so you can repair windows without a reinstall? we always just reroll and restore since it's usually a lot faster and easier and a lot quicker with HP hardware
 
It's tough to remotely diagnose a problem like yours. Things like the Event log history, patches, and other factors can mean a lot and aren't available to a random stranger.

IF it happens that you simply have a corrupted sytem file (Kernel32.dll), you can try to enter the Recovery Console (if you can get into the Recovery Console) and copy kernel32.dll from the ...\system32\dllcache directory to ...\system32. If this does not help, you can try to copy kernel32.dll from a Service Pack CD to the ...\system32 directory.

It's impossible to predict if this is the only problem, or only the first in a chain.

To start the Recovery Console, start the computer from the Windows 2003 CD-Rom. At the "Welcome to Setup" screen. Press F10 or R to repair a Windows 2003 installation, and then press C to use the Recovery Console.

If it was one of my servers, I'd just re-install SBS on the system partition, update it to the current Service Pack, and restore the system from the latest functional backup. If there ARE no backups, I'd re-install SBS and pray that there's not a large AD structure that needs to be re-created. 🙁

As you noted, restoring Exchange mailboxes is fairly straightforward easy if you are running Outlook in cached mode. You dump the mail into a .PST, create a new Outlook Profile, and dump the mail into the User's new mailbox. And if you aren't using Exchange (it sounds like you aren't), it becomes a non-issue.
 
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