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My previous post regarding issues booting into the same 2008 R2 machine have not evolved into a different issue. After fixing MFT errors with TestDisk I am now able to boot into server 2008 R2 via Active Directory Recovery Mode (Safe Mode). I've never had to use this mode before and know virtually nothing about it.

Basically from what I've gathered is that there are "Jet Errors" causing me to be unable to recover the Active Directory Database (NTDS.dit file) using the NTDSUtil cmd functions.

Microsoft KB - How to recover from Event ID 1168 and Event ID 1003 error messages
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/280364

Microsoft KB - Background on Active Directory Database Stores (NTDS.dit)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 61761.aspx

TechNet - Similar Issues someone else had and steps they have gone through.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... inserverDS

I'm all ears if someone is familiar with this sort of recovery or error. This seems to be the last things needing to be addressed in order to get this server back up and running. It was caused by a hard shut down due to a failed UPS, the customer was aware of this I guess and never mentioned it to the previous tech

This system sounds like it is pretty badly hosed. Even if you manage to get it running again, you're never going to be sure that everything has been repaired correctly. Can't you just pull off any critical data and rebuild the server?

As an aside, if that error message means what I think it does, I can't believe MS is using the JET database engine in a critical component of a server product. (JET was/is the database tech underlying MS Access.)

Edit: If it really is a JET formatted file, I suppose using an MS Access database repair tool on the NTDS.dit file may get you somewhere.

Edit 2: Related to your last TechNet link, possibly relevant: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... inserverDS

It's an LDAP database. Access shouldn't be used on it.

***SOLVED***

Integrity checks would not finished successfully. I went with a full on repair which didn't want to run the last few times I attempted it due to Jet Errors -501, I'm thinking that the CHKDSK which moved a few thing around may have fixed that. Note: I did run SFC /SCANNOW and no issues found. When doing an integrity check on the NTDS.dit it stated that the file had not been shut down properly or cleanly, so some data was basically not synced in comparison to some of the log files.

ESENTUTL /p C:\Windows\NTDS\NTDS.dit

Did a Lossy repair on the Active Directory Database file. Made sure to make a backup of the entire NTDS folder before doing anything.

Then make sure to rename the edb.log file to something else such as edb.log.bak.

Restart server normally, cross your fingers and hope for the best. Worked for me 2 days worth of fighting with this thing and some long nights, so happy to be done with it.

Thanks for the input JBI and Ryu, much appreciated one way or another. Yeah I didn't realize JET errors are MS Access as I have little to no experience with Access. Funny, I guess they had to find some way to reuse Access which seems like a dead product, its old from what I can tell, makes me think of FoxPro (Still have a customer running ancient software on FP6).