Windows 2003 R2 server took a shit after Windows Update

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The Cobra

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Hi Kids,

Need some help from my fellow "H'ers" on a server issue we are having. Our systems admin recently left after 7 years at the school where I work (I am the IT director) and I have slid back over into his role for a bit until we hire someone new. All of our Win2K3R2 servers have been replaced and our domain upgraded to Win2K12R2 at all of out campus locations except our middle school campus (The server I am talking about) It is a Dell Poweredge 2900 running Win2K3R2 (x64) with 16gb of memory and around 200GB of HD space on Raid 5. After a recent windows update we got a BSOD with the following error: csrsrv.dll cannot be found. Since the machine would not login, I had to manually replace the files as stated in this posting:

https://social.technet.microsoft.co...not-found-reinstalling-the?forum=winservergen

When that did not work, I was able to trace down that I had to also replace the hal.dll on the Win2K3 box. Now the server boots back into Windows, but does not allow use of the USB mouse and keyboard. The 2900 Dell Poweredge does not have a PS2 attachment on it to bypass the usb portion. I did all of the normal things, wait a while to see if it would detect it, tried to get in vie remote desktop, but the network portion is not firing up either. I just did a full backup of the machine using a Hiren Boot CD (15.2) and copied all the files off. (The server is just a backup DC that dishes off DNS/DHCP and folder redirection.) I wanted to try an upgrade using a 2008 R2 (x64) cd by booting off of it, but it states that I must perform an upgrade from within Windows, obviously this cannot be done because I can't boot back into Windows if I can't get to at least a keyboard to kickoff the upgrade.

Would anyone have any advice on what I should try next? The server is in good working order because we added new HD's to the unit last year to extend the life for another year or two. I don't want to manually have to go in to our domain and rip out the BU/DC manually and such, but it looks like I might just have to do that.

Any fellow H'ers have any advice before I blowout the box and just reinstall the newer OS?

Thanks in advanced....
 
Dealt with similar situations before and it is just less time and aggravation now and later (when more related issues will pop up) to blow it out and reload fresh.

Of course if you upgraded your domain/forest functional level to 2012r2, then it is no wonder your 2003r2 DC will not work. You have to upgrade all your units before you raise forest and domain functional levels.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us...els(v=ws.10).aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
 
run system file checker and see if it fixes it.
But I agree your going to likely end up with a reinstall.
 
schizrade said:
Dealt with similar situations before and it is just less time and aggravation now and later (when more related issues will pop up) to blow it out and reload fresh.

Of course if you upgraded your domain/forest functional level to 2012r2, then it is no wonder your 2003r2 DC will not work. You have to upgrade all your units before you raise forest and domain functional levels.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us...els(v=ws.10).aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
Click to expand...

Our domain is on 2008 R2 level, this never caused any issues. We just have two DC's with 2012 R2 on them.
 
The Cobra said:
Our domain is on 2008 R2 level, this never caused any issues. We just have two DC's with 2012 R2 on them.
Click to expand...

OK you said domain upgraded to 2012r2, which to would indicate 2012r2 Forest/domain functional level. but your above description is the same thing. A 2003r2 DC cannot function properly on a 2008r2 level. Forest and domain functional level go up not down. Since it fate was sealed before the upgrade failed anyway, just reroll it as 2012r2. No network stack means doing any kind of force de-promo is out of the question, so just remove it from the domain on the admin side. I assume it didn't have any FSMO roles as it was a SDC, so you just have to remove the AD objects, dns entries and clean up Sites and Services a bit.

In the end I would not attempt to save the install, since after you repair it, you still have to either attempt to upgrade again, or demote it anyways and load 2012r2 on it. Just skip all that mess and go for it.
 
As it seems lile just a dns/dhcp box I would probably just reload it with whatever the newest available license you have is.

Asks the question though - no backup in place to restore from?
 
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My guess would be dying hard drive on a server that old, even if you have new drives, but the data might not be as perfect from how it was cloned/rebuilt. Maybe try SpinRite.

Does safemode work? If it does, try sfc /scannow
 
Last edited:
Piccolo5055 n00bie, 1 Day

Status: Piccolo5055 is offline
Windows 2003 R2 server took a shit after Windows Update
I'm having a difficult time with my messaging you, even after activating my account. See below.

Sure, no problem. We were able to get our clients SQL server working again. Because the client did not have a floppy disk or the Dell Server and installation cd, we were unable to log into the Windows Server 2003 Recovery Console, due to a lack of SATA drivers. Instead, we used a Windows 7 64bit installation disk to access a command prompt. From there, we were able to browse to the log files for the Windows Updates. KB3045999 had a lot of errors during the install. Trying to uninstall the update would not work through the command line, presumably because we were running wusa /uninstall from a Windows 7 cd. However, there was an uninstall batch that would not run either. Looking in the batch code showed all of the files that would be rolled back and the location of the old dlls. There were roughly 7-10 of them. Copying those dll files back manually fixed the boot up issue. I wish I had a list of the files and locations, but sadly I don’t have them on me and I no longer have access to the server.
After it came back the majority of the server’s would not run, so nothing worked. After a while of troubleshooting, we tried reinstalling the latest service pack for Server 2003 and that did the trick. The client has been advised to upgrade.
I still can’t post, even after activating my new account. If you don’t mind can you post this fix on the forum? Can you mention that it is the same model, stop code and boot up issue? Thanks!
 
Little bit of necro here - but just ran into this on a client's 2003 x64 server (also Poweredge, 1950 in this case).

KB3045999 was the update that was at fault.

Our situation was from some other failed update (still tracking down) that required us to restore as a local VM on our Datto. They recommend doing local VM, then backing up with ShadowProtect, and running a restore. I did that and resulted in the CSRSRV.dll missing bluescreen on first boot. StorageCraft has this update mentioned as problematic as well: https://www.storagecraft.com/support/kb/article/352

What I ended up doing, was boot to live cd, and manually replace the files that were updated by KB3045999 (hal.dll, ntkrnl, etc.) with some direction from https://social.technet.microsoft.co...not-found-reinstalling-the?forum=winservergen. The $NtUninstall folder for the update lists the files replaced.

This got the server booted, but many applications failed to start. Uninstalled the update via add/remove (server locked up on my during uninstal), power cycled, then booted correctly, ran through a bunch of hardware detection, rebooted again, and was good to go.
 
I ended up just killing the 2003 server and doing a clean install of 2012 R2. I overwrote the C drive and reattached the data drives, then redid the permissions. Everything came back.
 
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