Active Directory (AD) failure, which includes corruption, is something that is dreaded by any administrator. Simply put, it means that the directory service can no longer read the Active Directory database that it has locally. This will prevent logon and authentication as well as any directory-dependent services. Essentially, it renders the domain controller useless. What's worse, though, is that several times, the replication keeps going so that the corrupted database spreads out to the other DCs.

In this chapter we will look at the different options and approaches available to recover a DC that has a database corruption. In addition, this chapter outlines, symptoms, causes, and solutions for this scenario.