Sysvol or Netlogon shares do not work after disaster recovery or SDR of a Domain Controller

Problem

The condition described in this article will most likely be encountered when a test restore of a domain controller (or all domain controllers) is performed in a temporary isolated non-production domain environment to simulate an actual disaster recovery situation, or if the domain controller being restored is the only domain controller in the production environment.

Error Message

Cause

The standard restore (or Simplified Disaster Recovery) operation will complete successfully and the machine can be logged into afterwards. All data will seem to be there but the following will be observed:

1. Sysvol and Netlogon shares will be missing

To test this, a command such as \\domain.local\sysvol\domain.local does not resolve to a working share as it will when Active Directory is functioning.

2. Dcdiag.exe will not pass the FSMOcheck test

Note: This condition may be expected temporarily when restoring a domain controller in a production environment because it may take up to several hours for Active Directory information to be replicated from the other controllers to the machine that is being restored. Under this circumstance, simply wait after the restore operations have completed and check the system after a few hours have passed. The condition typically resolves itself.

Also be aware that when a physical machine has been converted to a virtual machine, the network adapter is not included as part of the conversion process, so under those conditions a network card will need to be added in order for this replication to take place.

 Error message when you try to set an IP address on a network adapter

support.microsoft.com/kb/269155

Solution

According to Microsoft, this behavior is by design and occurs because the File Replication service (FRS) is unable to locate a valid replication partner to synchronize the Sysvol replica set with.

It has been observed in all versions of Windows Server 2000 - Windows 2008 R2.

For more information on how to recover the domain controllers from this state, review the following articles:

The Sysvol and Netlogon Shares Are Missing After You Restore a Domain Controller from Backup

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/networking/troubleshoot-missing-sysvol-and-netlogon-shares

The NETLOGON share is not present after you install Active Directory Domain Services on a new full or read-only Windows Server 2008-based domain controller

support.microsoft.com/kb/947022

How to rebuild the SYSVOL tree and its content in a domain

support.microsoft.com/kb/315457

Troubleshooting missing SYSVOL and NETLOGON shares on Windows domain controllers

support.microsoft.com/kb/257338