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Hello Robert,

Thank you for using Acronis Corporate Products

Back up the system with Domain Controller using Ntbackup. See Backing Up and Restoring Active Directory Server with Acronis True Image;

1. Restore the backup to the new hardware using Acronis Universal Restore and adding new drivers. See Transferring Windows to Dissimilar Hardware.  On this step the drivers will be OK to boot in Windows, but AD might fail to replicate with other Domain Controller.

2. Disconnect any network connection before booting;

3. Start system in Active Directory Restore mode by pressing F8 during boot. If you cannot log into the system with your credentials, try logging in without specifying any password.

4. Restore the system state using Ntbackup. See Microsoft TechNet Chapter Active Directory Backup and Restore. On this step AD should be consistent after the system state recovery, but the old drivers will be restored. Hence, if attempted, the system will fail to boot

5. Then do not boot Windows, but reboot the machine from Acronis Bootable Media and create an image of the system partition you have on the machine;

6. Finally, restore the system partition once again using Acronis Universal Restore and specifying the respective drivers once again.

Now mass storage device drivers, HAL and AD should be altogether working properly. You can start the Domain Controller and boot in Windows. It will be able to replicate with other Domain Controllers in the network.

Thank you.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.  I'm hoping this works with Windows 2008. This was never a problem when restoring system state in Windows 2003 since NTBackup did not backup/restore drivers, etc when performing just a system state restore.  When MS introduced Windows 2008 they completely changed the way backups are handled.  NTBackup was done away with completely and in its place is Windows Server Backup which creates a partial vhd image for system state, including, apparently, drivers as well.  It looks like your solution may work since the problem I've been trying to overcome is making sure the correct drivers are restored after the systemstate recovery is performed.  Creating the second image and restoring it with Universal Restore should do the trick.  Thanks for pointing it out and will post results tomorrow. 

Thanks Oleg, your solution worked!  However, are you aware of any other method of passing drivers to Windows 2008 at boot time?  While creating/restoring a new image using Universal Restore does work, it's also very time consuming.

Any further info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again!

Rob

Hello all,

Robert, unfortunately, current versions of our programs do not have the ability to skip drivers during the recovery. Probably it will be implemented in next version of a product.

Thank you for your understanding!