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RickFerr

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Cannot start Directory Services Restore Mode on Windows SBS 2003 server

I have a W2k3 SBS server  that suffered an unexpected shutdown and a failed drive due to a major power event.  I had been able to run a checkdisk to repair most errors on disk.  The server then booted to the point where I received " Accounts Manager initialization failed because of the following error: Directory Service cannot start. Error Status: 0xc00002e1. Please click OK to shutdown this system and reboot Directory Services Restore Mode, check the event log for more detailed information." I was able to boot into DSRM but never received my Windows desktop. If I tried to run task manager, nothing would happen.  I then attempted a repair of the OS then ended up with the same "Directory Service cannot start error" message during the repair procedure. I booted to a BartPE WinXp CD and tried to do a repair of the ntds.dit using esentutl but am receiving error "Operation terminated with error -1062 (Jet_errInvalidLanguageID or unknown language ID" . Unfortunately, the customer does not have a backup so I cannot restore the AD database. Please let me know if there is any other option than a reinstall of the OS.
Thanks
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jrhelgeson
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Sounds like drive corruption to me.  What kind of disk is it on? Is it on a RAID array?  If so, turn off caching, and do a health check of the array.  Once the array is good, then you can start looking at OS level file system corruption.

I have several other options, but I'll wait to hear more.
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RickFerr

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I have identified the failed drive in the RAID10 array and the array has been rebuilt and functional.  Checkdisk reports the drive being clean.  The Promise array controller bios is very limited with options and does not have an option to turn off cache.   I would be interested in your other suggestions at this point as there is nothing else I can do with the array.
Thanks
There has got to be a controller error.  You've got too much disk redundancy to for me to think there is that much disk corruption issues.
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RickFerr

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I resolved the issue with a reinstall. Thank you for those who added comments.