Windows Active Directory issues with Binding

These are the errors;

Windows cannot bind to domain. (Local Error). Group Policy processing aborted.

Windows cannot query for the list of Group Policy objects. A message that describes the reason for this was previously logged by the policy engine.

Ends up that one of our network guys installed a new server and it was running Computer Browser, and causing constant elections. So the Computer Browser service was down as much as it was up.

We run 3 Computer Browser servers on our LAN to prevent these elections and the guy forgot to disable the service on the new server. Once he disabled the service, I was able to run gpupdate without errors.

This was causing slow logins / logons as well.

Making a Ghost 8.2 clone of my Dell R300 server.

I have historically used Compaq/HP Proliant servers with Intel NICs and chipsets that I have boot disks for. I typically use an older version of the Ultimate Boot Disk which contains Bart's Network Boot Disk, the Microsoft DOS version. I boot to the network in DOS, map a drive, and run ghost.exe to back up the SCSI drives to the LAN.

This doesn't work on my Dell R300. It has too much memory so I run into that issue. Plus there are nasty problems with B57.sys in this environment.

The solution was to download from NU2.com Bart's PE Builder. I installed that and pointed it to my XP SP3 CD (or the parent of the i386 Directory on a network.) Then I took the B57 drivers from Broadcom's site. The drivers are the small K ones, unsigned. The Zip has win_xp_2k3_32 and in that it has b57win32.inf 03/19/2008,10.78.0.0 for the 5700 series. This Dell has 5722 NIC's.

Then I went to LSI's site and did a search for the XP drivers for the SAS controller. The ZIP file has symmpi_xp_x86 and in that lsipseud.inf driver version 06/03/2008,6.5.0. The link is http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/standard_product_ics/sas_ics/lsisas1068/index.html and click on downloads. The driver is the XP one which is 1.28.03.00. I did not use the WHQL one. I tried the Windows 2003 one from Dell, but that doesn't work in a WINXP OS.

So those are downloaded and put in the C:\pebuilder3110a\drivers\ directories.

I then went into addons and added the Ghost 8.2 files.

Then I created a bootable DVD using the PE builder interface.

I booted up off the DVD and started up the NIC's. Once started, I mapped a drive and ghosted to the network. I was able to see speeds over 1GB/min writing and over 2GB/min on verify. Much quicker than I ever got in DOS.

Anyway, this is how you can GHOST 8.2 a Dell R300 server for disaster recovery. I'm sure you could use this for DD or any other disk cloaning software. I have yet to try restoring the GHOST yet. Hopefully I never will have to try that.