Failed to Boot an Instant VM if the source machine is a Windows 2008/2012/2016 AD Server

Symptom

Failed to boot instant VM if the VM is a Windows 2008 Active Directory Server.

When the source machine is a Windows Active Directory server performing Instant VM job, the Instant VM fail to boot and a blue screen displays with the following message:

STOP: c00002e2 Directory Services could not start because of the following error: a device attached to the system is not functioning. Error status: 0xc0000001.

Solution 1:

If the target hypervisor is a Hyper-V, add the following registry key on the HyperV hypervisor, and then trigger the IVM job.

If the target hypervisor is an ESX/Vcenter, add the following registry key on the Proxy machine, which is used to run Instant VM job, and then trigger the IVM job.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Arcserve\Unified Data Protection\Engine\InstantVM

Reg type: DWORD value

Name: RenameADLog

Value: 1

Limitations:

• If the NTDS database and the NTDS log file paths are on different volumes, then the above solution is not suitable.
• As of now, the above solution is valid only for Windows 2008 Active Directory Server.

Solution 2:

Manually solving the problem, by logging into the Instant VM.

Follow these steps:

1. Power on the Instant VM.
2. When the machine is powering on, press F8 before the OS begins to load and choose the Directory Service Restore mode.
3. Rename all *.log files in the folder, C:\Windows\NTDS. For example, rename the file edb.log to edb.log.old
4. Run the command:

   esentutl /p "C:\Windows\NTDS\ntds.dit" 

5. Restart the system.

Note: The above solution is valid for all the versions of Windows Servers with Active Directory installed.