{"id":174,"date":"2004-10-12T21:38:00","date_gmt":"2004-10-13T04:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kb.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb-articles\/directory-services-cannot-start-error-message\/"},"modified":"2021-09-10T14:38:27","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T21:38:27","slug":"directory-services-cannot-start-error-message","status":"publish","type":"lsvr_kba","link":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/kb-articles\/directory-services-cannot-start-error-message\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Directory Services cannot start&#8221; error message"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You may receive this message when attempting to start your Windows based domain controller under the following circumstances:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li>The NTFS file system permission on the root are too restrictive.<\/li>\r\n\t<li>The NTFS file system permission on the NTDS folder are too restrictive.<\/li>\r\n\t<li>The drive letter of the volume that contains the Active Directory database has changed.<\/li>\r\n\t<li>The\u00a0Active Directory\u00a0database (Ntds.dit) is corrupted.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>For a good article on diagnosing this problem see:<br \/>\r\n<a href=\"http:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/default.aspx?kbid=258062\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">\"Directory Services cannot start\" error message when you start your Windows-based or SBS-based domain controller<\/span><\/a><\/p>\r\n<p>If you have recieved this message as part of restoring or copying partitions,\u00a0the most likely cause is the drive letter is unavailable or has changed.\u00a0\u00a0This can be caused if your AD database is spread out over multiple drive letters and\u00a0Windows has not\u00a0assigned the drive letter to the partition before it's actually needed.\u00a0 The rest of this article assumes that is the condition you have.<\/p>\r\n<p>If you are using Image for DOS, Image for Linux,\u00a0or Image for Windows to recover the partitions on a new drive,\u00a0you must restore each partition to the same location on the new hard drive (this may require one or more existing partitions to be deleted). The original disk signature can be restored using the <em>Restore Disk Signature<\/em> option, if necessary.<\/p>\r\n<p>If you are using BootIt BM, you can try the following methods:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li>Opening the drive in <strong>Partition Work<\/strong>, clicking <strong>View MBR<\/strong>, and clicking the <strong>Clear Sig<\/strong> button. <br \/>\r\n<br \/>\r\n<\/li>\r\n\t<li>Opening the drive in <strong>Partition Work<\/strong>, clicking <strong>View MBR<\/strong>,\u00a0and entering the\u00a0original signature using the <strong>Edit Sig<\/strong> button.<br \/>\r\n<br \/>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>As another option, you can use the free <a href=\"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/downloads-free-software\/#mbrwork\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MBRWORK utility<\/a>\u00a0to capture\u00a04 sectors starting at LBA 0 on the source drive and restore to the same\u00a0LBA on the target drive.\u00a0 Then proceed with the image restore operation.<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may receive this message when attempting to start your Windows based domain controller under the following circumstances: The NTFS file system permission on the root are too restrictive. The NTFS file system permission on the NTDS folder are too restrictive. The drive letter of the volume that contains the Active Directory database has changed. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"lsvr_kba_cat":[1782],"lsvr_kba_tag":[2127,2147,2145,2146],"class_list":["post-174","lsvr_kba","type-lsvr_kba","status-publish","hentry","lsvr_kba_cat-nt-2k-xp-2003","lsvr_kba_tag-windows","lsvr_kba_tag-windows-2003","lsvr_kba_tag-windows-2k","lsvr_kba_tag-windows-xp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/lsvr_kba"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6642,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba\/174\/revisions\/6642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"lsvr_kba_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba_cat?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"lsvr_kba_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba_tag?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}