Performing an Authoritative Restore of an Application Directory Partition

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Restoration of an application partition will mark all data that is present in the application partition as authoritative for the replica set. Information that is contained within an application partition will replicate to all domain controllers in the forest that were previously present in the replica set. You should have a current valid backup of the application partition prior to restoring, in the event that particular object changes are lost because of changes since backup.

Task Requirements

The following tools are required to perform the procedures for this task:

  • Backup.exe

  • Ntdsutil.exe

To complete this task, perform the following procedures:

  1. Restore Active Directory from backup

  2. Mark the application directory partition as authoritative

  3. Restart the computer

    Once the authoritative restore of the object or objects has been completed a second time, the domain controller can be restarted in normal mode.