Performing an Authoritative Restore of Deleted AD DS Objects

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Applies To: Windows Server 2008

To perform an authoritative restore of objects in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), you use the ntdsutil authoritative restore command to mark an object or objects as authoritative.

Authoritative restore of AD DS has the following requirements:

  • The object that you want to restore must exist in the Active Directory database on the domain controller where you perform the authoritative restore.

  • You must stop the Active Directory Domain Services service before you run the ntdsutil authoritative restore command and restart the service after the command is complete.

    To stop the service, you can run the net stop ntds command or you can restart the domain controller in Directory Services Restore Mode (DSRM).

    To start the service, run the net start ntds command.

For procedures to perform an authoritative restore, see Performing an Authoritative Restore of Active Directory Objects (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115332). Skip the first step in that procedure: Restore from Backup Media.