Windows Server 2012 Bare Metal Restore on repaired T110 II will not resume DC role (stand-alone)

Hi,

A T110 II suffered a catastrophic hardware failure and most of the hardware in it was replaced - at least the system board, 2 x SAS, PERC H200, PSU, cables.

Once the server was running and the Virtual Disk had been initialised, a bare-metal restore was performed from a WindowsImageBackup run the night before. The server operates as a stand-alone Windows Server 2012 Standard DC, and provides basic services - AD/DS, File shares, DNS/DHCP to a small NFP organisation with about a dozen users.

The restore completed and the server restarted without incident. Initial indications were good - file shares and internet were accessible from clients, rdp access worked, printing, etc. Later, on closer inspection however, it became apparent that the AD services were not running. After some investigation it was discovered that the server is refusing to resume its DC role. In particular NetLogon and SYSVOL network shares are missing, and nothing that requires the presence of an active DC is functioning. This is reflected in errors such as:

• 14550 DfsSvc The DFS Namespace service could not initialize cross forest trust information on this domain controller ...
• 1129 GroupPolicy The processing of Group Policy failed because of lack of network connectivity to a domain controller.

Further investigation revealed that the AD configuration included references to a non-existent DC - at a guess is it was the old server that was migrated to this new system when it was retired. That server has been manually (ADSI Edit) removed along with related DNS configurations. However dcdiag reports a couple of errors with the config:

(NB: The server unfortunately has been named "SERVER" and the domain ncs.com is not owned by this organisation)

      Starting test: VerifyReferences
         Some objects relating to the DC SERVER have problems:
            [1] Problem: Missing Expected Value
             Base Object: CN=NTDS Settings,CN=SERVER,CN=Servers,CN=Default-First-Site-Name,CN=Sites,CN=Configuration,DC=ncs,DC=com
             Base Object Description: "DSA Object"
             Value Object Attribute Name: serverReferenceBL
             Value Object Description: "SYSVOL FRS Member Object"
             Recommended Action: See Knowledge Base Article: Q312862

            [1] Problem: Missing Expected Value
             Base Object: CN=SERVER,OU=Domain Controllers,DC=ncs,DC=com
             Base Object Description: "DC Account Object"
             Value Object Attribute Name: frsComputerReferenceBL
             Value Object Description: "SYSVOL FRS Member Object"
             Recommended Action: See Knowledge Base Article: Q312862

         ......................... SERVER failed test VerifyReferences

The list of failed tests are:

         ......................... SERVER failed test Advertising

         ......................... SERVER failed test NetLogons

         ......................... SERVER failed test SystemLog

         ......................... SERVER failed test VerifyReferences

         ......................... ncs.com failed test LocatorCheck

I have attempted to follow KB312862 to eliminate a null-server reference issue, but I'm not sure how to resolve the above VerifyReference failures, if it can be done at all that way.

So what's the best strategy to get this server functional again? Is there any point in performing another BMR? A system state restore? Or what other procedure is needed to fix this?

Afterwards I'm keen to determine why the restore has not worked as I expected and what steps need to be taken to allow a smooth recovery should it be needed in the future, but the immediate priority is to get the server running properly again, of course.

Thanks for any help.