I decided to first do a parallel install of the OS and see if I could get to the registry of the bad install and get the new software uninstalled…After I got the new install done I jumped into the registry of the bad install and found it totally messed up. So that idea had gone nowhere and cost me about 40 min. Now this server is the server that has all the work data for the company..every drawing, memo and documentation of all our current and past jobs so I had to get this server back up and running so I didn’t have managers yelling at me that their people weren’t working and the projects weren’t getting done.
I checked the RAID container that holds all the data and saw it was okay. So I sat down figured that the only data needed from the OS RAID container was the databases for the NetBackup software. So I copied the whole backup software folder to the data RAID. I then started a fresh install of the OS. While that was going on I jumped on to the phone with Veritas to find out what files/directories to put back once I got the server back up and the backup software installed. I ended up talking to Simon in London who was a great help. I found that I was unable to call England from my phone system. So when I hadn’t called Simon back when I told him I would he called me directly and I told him my calling problems and let him know that I wasn’t done with the OS install so he said he would call me back in an hour. Once I got all the drivers and software installed and files copied back Simon called right in time to walk me through a test and to see if all my metadata for all my back up…yea it was….and the backups went through last night.
So after many reboots and share setups the server was back up and running with a fresh OS install and all the data was safe and sound and I didn’t lose all my backup information.
The lesson learned – never touch anything on a Friday especially Friday the 13th 😉