When I got home I checked the screen to see what had happened to it… blue screen! No wonder I couldn’t access it any more. A complete reinstall was most likely in order, as it had never been quite right after having to repair Windows when I did the hardware upgrades a few weeks ago.

I wanted to try setting up a new Directory Controller and replicate all the user data to it, so I could keep my user account and SID the same – if possible.

So, I installed 2003 on my spare PC and ran dcpromo, joined it to my domain and let the users replicate. Backed up the email files a final time, then I set to work on formatting and reinstalling SBS on the server.

It crashed part way through the 2nd part of the install (the graphical bit after the text bit), so I rebooted and tried again, this time it managed to get into Windows and then crashed on the 3rd part.

Rebooted again, ran the install again, and this time before starting the 3rd part, I tried to Ghost the drive so I could get back to the same point without having to wait 2 hours for the 1st and 2nd parts to complete.

This was to cause me hours of stress as I can’t use Ghost 2003 because it’s a personal edition which doesn’t understand server partitions! I had to download the corporate version and try that.

I made a bootable CD and tried to run Ghost from it, but kept having problems with hard drives. I think it must something to do with having a Dynamic Disk in the server, so I tried using a spare hard drive from another computer.

After a few wasted attempts I gave up for the night, hoping to sleep on it and be able to continue in the morning.