Restore deleted user active directory windows 2003

If this method isn't available to you, the following three methods can be used. In all three methods, you authoritatively restore the deleted objects, and then you restore group membership information for the deleted security principals. When you restore a deleted object, you must restore the former values of the member and memberOf attributes in the affected security principal.

Recovering deleted objects in Active directory can be simplified by enabling the AD Recycle Bin feature supported on domain controllers based on Windows Server R2 and later.

Methods 1 and 2 provide a better experience for domain users and administrators. These methods preserve the additions to security groups that were made between the time of the last system state backup and the time the deletion occurred.

In method 3, you don't make individual adjustments to security principals. Instead, you roll back security group memberships to their state at the time of the last backup.

Most large-scale deletions are accidental. Microsoft recommends that you take several steps to prevent others from deleting objects in bulk. You can also change the default permissions in the AD schema for organizational units so that these ACEs are included by default. For example, to protect the organization unit that is called. COM from accidentally being moved or deleted out of its parent organizational unit that is called MyCompany , make the following configuration:.

The Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in in Windows Server includes a Protect object from accidental deletion check box on the Object tab. When you create an organizational unit by using Active Directory Users and Computers in Windows Server , the Protect container from accidental deletion check box appears. By default, the check box is selected and can be deselected. Although you can configure every object in Active Directory by using these ACEs, it's best suited for organizational units.

Deletion or movements of all leaf objects can have a major effect. This configuration prevents such deletions or movements. To really delete or move an object by using such a configuration, the Deny ACEs must be removed first. This article discusses how to restore user accounts, computer accounts, and their group memberships after they have been deleted from Active Directory.

In variations of this scenario, user accounts, computer accounts, or security groups may have been deleted individually or in some combination. In all these cases, the same initial steps apply. You authoritatively restore, or auth restore, those objects that were inadvertently deleted. Some deleted objects require more work to be restored. These objects include objects such as user accounts that contain attributes that are back links of the attributes of other objects.

Two of these attributes are managedBy and memberOf. When you add security principals, such as a user account, a security group, or a computer account to a security group, you make the following changes in Active Directory:. Similarly, when a user, a computer, or a group is deleted from Active Directory, the following actions occur:. When you recover deleted security principals and restore their group memberships, each security principal must exist in Active Directory before you restore its group membership.

The member may be a user, a computer, or another security group. To restate this rule more broadly, an object that contains attributes whose values are back links must exist in Active Directory before the object that contains that forward link can be restored or modified.

This article focuses on how to recover deleted user accounts and their memberships in security groups. Its concepts apply equally to other object deletions. This article's concepts apply equally to deleted objects whose attribute values use forward links and back links to other objects in Active Directory.

You can use either of the three methods to recover security principals. When you use method 1, you leave in place all security principals that were added to any security group across the forest. And you add only security principals that were deleted from their respective domains back to their security groups. For example, you make a system state backup, add a user to a security group, and then restore the system state backup. When you use methods 1 or 2, you preserve any users who were added to security groups that contain deleted users between the dates that the system state backup was created and the date that the backup was restored.

When you use method 3, you roll back security group memberships for all the security groups that contain deleted users to their state at the time of the system state backup. The Ntdsutil. Two files are generated for each authoritative restore operation. One file contains a list of authoritatively restored objects. The other file is a. This file is used to restore the backlinks for the objects that are authoritatively restored.

This method avoids a double restoration. Check whether there's a global catalog domain controller in the deleted user's home domain that hasn't replicated any part of the deletion. If one or more of these global catalogs exist, use the Repadmin.

If you can't issue the Repadmin command immediately, remove all network connectivity from the latent global catalog until you can use Repadmin to disable inbound replication, and then immediately return network connectivity. This domain controller will be referred to as the recovery domain controller. If there is no such global catalog, go to step 2. It's best to stop making changes to security groups in the forest if all the following statements are true:.

If you're auth restoring security groups or organizational unit OU containers that host security groups or user accounts, temporarily stop all these changes.

Notify administrators and help desk administrators in the appropriate domains in addition to domain users in the domain where the deletion occurred about stopping these changes. Create a new system state backup in the domain where the deletion occurred. You can use this backup if you have to roll back your changes. If system state backups are current up to the point of the deletion, skip this step and go to step 4. If all the global catalogs located in the domain where the deletion occurred replicated in the deletion, back up the system state of a global catalog in the domain where the deletion occurred.

When you create a backup, you can return the recovery domain controller back to its current state. And perform your recovery plan again if your first try isn't successful.

If you can't find a latent global catalog domain controller in the domain where the user deletion occurred, find the most recent system state backup of a global catalog domain controller in that domain.

This system state backup should contain the deleted objects. Use this domain controller as the recovery domain controller. Only restorations of the global catalog domain controllers in the user's domain contain global and universal group membership information for security groups that reside in external domains. If there's no system state backup of a global catalog domain controller in the domain where users were deleted, you can't use the memberOf attribute on restored user accounts to determine global or universal group membership or to recover membership in external domains.

Additionally, it's a good idea to find the most recent system state backup of a non-global catalog domain controller. If you know the password for the offline administrator account, start the recovery domain controller in Disrepair mode. If you don't know the password for the offline administrator account, reset the password using ntdsutil. You can use the setpwd command-line tool to reset the password on domain controllers while they are in online Active Directory mode.

Administrators of Windows Server and later domain controllers can use the set dsrm password command in the Ntdsutil command-line tool to reset the password for the offline administrator account. Press F8 during the startup process to start the recovery domain controller in Disrepair mode. Sign in to the console of the recovery domain controller with the offline administrator account. If you reset the password in step 5, use the new password. If the recovery domain controller is a latent global catalog domain controller, don't restore the system state.

Go to step 7. If you're creating the recovery domain controller by using a system state backup, restore the most current system state backup that was made on the recovery domain controller now. Auth restore the deleted user accounts, the deleted computer accounts, or the deleted security groups. The terms auth restore and authoritative restore refer to the process of using the authoritative restore command in the Ntdsutil command-line tool to increment the version numbers of specific objects or of specific containers and all their subordinate objects.

As soon as end-to-end replication occurs, the targeted objects in the recovery domain controller's local copy of Active Directory become authoritative on all the domain controllers that share that partition.

After the process has completed, reboot. After reboot, the domain controller will replicate the group s that has have been authoritatively restored. As the user accounts are now present in Active Directory, these will not be silently dropped from the membership list of the group, leaving both the users and groups consistent inside Active Directory. For more information, please refer to the following Microsoft KB articles:. Authoritative restore of groups can result in inconsistent membership information across domain controllers.

How to restore deleted user accounts and their group memberships in Active Directory. That is, the domain is at functional level with two dc's that are windows server and two dc's that are windows server You should be able to view deleted objects by connecting to any of your DCs - as long as they are part of the same domain.

Office Office Exchange Server. Not an IT pro? Windows Server TechCenter. Sign in. United States English. Ask a question. Quick access. Search related threads. Remove From My Forums. As you can see from the DistinguishedName, this user account is placed to the Deleted Objects container. Using the parameters returned by the previous command, you can restore the user object.

To restore an object, use the command:. In this case, the user account is restored to the same AD organizational unit. In This Article. What happens to a Deleted Active Directory Object? A unique value is assigned to Windows security descriptor. RDN is changed to an impossible value. In tombstone state, most of the link-valued and non-linked value attributes are stripped off. It remains here for another 60 to days.

The object is completely erased. Most of the attributes are erased. The object cannot be recovered. After the expiry of recycled state, the garbage collection process starts, and it removes the object from the database.