Protect your Win 2000 Server

The ADS (Active Directory Service) on a Win 2000 Server holds all critical information about your network resources, such as your users, computers and sites. It basically maps your organizational structure into a database. It is therefore very important to keep the ADS up and running. 

This Wizard lets you take a backup of your systems state data

There’s a way to backup not only the Active Directory, but also other critical system information such as boot files, system files, sysvol, registry, Certificate Service, cluster database, component class registration database and performance counter configuration information. In this article, we’ll explain a quick way to backup all critical system data, and also how to restore the same in the case of a system crash. 

To perform the backup, click on Start>Run and enter the ntbackup.exe command. This will start a Windows backup tool. Click on Tools>Backup Wizard from the menu bar to start the back up Wizard. Click next and select Only back up the System State Data among the options and click Next. 

You’ll now need to provide a location for storing the backup. Choose the type of backup media you want to use from the drop down list. We chose to save the data into a file. Choose a suitable location to save the file, click Next and finally click Finish to create the backup. 

Restoring system data 



If your domain controller crashes and you end up reinstalling your Win 2000 Server, then you can restore all your settings from the backup you created. 

This is how you can restore your system’s state data using Windows backup tool

For this, again go to Start>Run and run ntbackup. This time, when the program runs, select the Restore tab. When the Wizard starts, it will ask you for the name of the backup file that needs to be restored. 

When you select the file, a window will appear showing your backup system data organized by date. Click on the + sign and you’ll find an icon called System state. 

Click on the check box next to the system state icon, click next and finally OK. This should restore all your critical system data. 

Reboot the system to check whether this has been done. 

Finally, before you restore your Active Directory from the backup, boot your Win 2000 Server in safe mode with the directory restore option. 

Also, in case your organisation’s ADS relies on DNS, you need to back up the system disk as well as the system state in order to incorporate the DNS zone data.

Sanjay Majumder