Step by step - restore active directory objects from Windows backup

I accidentally deleted some active directory objects when I was deleting some Exchange mailboxes.  Chaos ensued, but I had to restore the active directory users.

Here's what Microsoft helped me do (step by step).

Boot into Directory services restore mode.  (see here for how: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/activedirectoryua/2008/11/20/how-to-start-in-directory-service-restore-mode-dsrm-in-windows-server-2008-and-windows-server-2008-r2/)

Log in

Open an elevated command prompt

type "wbadmin get versions"
This will give you all the backups that you can restore from.
Pay attention to the version identifier as this will define what backup you're working with.

type "wbadmin start systemstaterecovery -version:10/01/2016-04:30" where 10/01/2016-04:30 will vary based on the actual version that you are restoring from that you found when you ran "wbadmin get versions"

Choose yes twice.

Now, you'll need to wait 45 to 90 minutes while the system preps itself.  Ugh.

Next, you'll restore organization units (OUs) as a whole to the version the the OUs were at the time of the backup.  So for example, if I have an OU named accounting and I'm doing a restore on October 3, 2016 where the backup I'm restoring from is October 1, 2016 - all changes from 10/1/16 to 10/3/16 will be lost.

This gets less intuitive here.  After the system has loaded the backup, the system will ask you to reboot the server.  Don't do it.

Instead, launch a command prompt, type ntdsutil, and then press Enter.

1 .           Type activate instance ntds and press Enter.

2.            Type authoritative restore and press Enter.

3.            At this point, determine whether you're restoring an OU or an object. The previous table showed the syntax to restore either an OU or an object. Type the restore command and press Enter.

For example, to restore a user object, use the following format:

•             restore object dn

•             restore object "cn=Sally,ou=sales,dc=pearson,dc=pub"

Or, to restore an OU, use the following format:

•             restore subtree dn

•             restore subtree "ou=sales,dc=pearson,dc=pub"

NOTE

This increments the update sequence number (USN) so that all other DCs consider it the most recent change.

4.            Type quit and press Enter twice to exit ntdsutil.

5.            Restart the DC normally.

As an example. if you were restoring an OU called distribution groups which sits under an OU called MyBusiness, you'd type:

restore subtree "OU=distribution groups,OU=MyBusiness,DC=contoso,DC=local"
if you're not familiar with LDAP syntax (which I'm not), some googling and trial and error will help you find what you need.  If you type in the wrong values, the process willl just fail.

This is what a successful restore looks like.  Look at "successfully updated records"

What's weird for me in the two times I've tried this is that I rebooted once, and my 2008 R2 server had no internet connectivity and no restored AD items on first reboot.  I had reboot again to get my items and to get internet connectivity.  So weird.

Removing email proxy addresses from AD (helpful if you sync your AD to Office365)

Right now, this is a partial post while I get the PowerShell scripting components together. I needed to remove all the proxy addresses for a certain domain in advance of removing that certain domain from our Office365 account. Because we sync our local AD with Office365, I need to remove the proxy addresses from the local AD.  I could do this manually, of course - which is long and inefficient.  The crucial command I used is this one:

Set-ADUser username -Remove @{ProxyAddresses="smtp:username@domain.com"}

I ran this from "Active Directory Powershell for Windows PowerShell"

Because I'm not good enough with PowerShell yet, here's what I did.  I tried to remove the domain from the account in Office365.  Office365 returned all the mailboxes that had the domain as aliases.  I copied and pasted the list of mailboxes to Excel.  I extracted the mailbox user names from the list and made a single column in Excel of those mailbox names (in my case - our domain uses a username of joe.smith as the username for Joe Smith) so the single column included Joe.Smith.  Then I did a mail merge with that list to create a get that PowerShell command listed above to be individualized with each username.  And then I copied and pasted those commands into PowerShell.  Not ideal.  Ideally, you'd have a foreach command that would run though all AD users, but this is a story about what I did at this moment.  I'll update this post.

steps on creating a new user

1) create user account (and if necessary, mail account if done separately)

2) adjust user profile script and home folder, if necessary

3) put user on appropriate distribution lists

4) log into computer as user

5) confirm drives mapped correctly

6) set up Outlook with appropriate archiving

7) add Bcc to view when composing new message

8) set up printers or confirm printers mapped correctly

9) make sure user has appropriate local permissions on computer (admin or standard/restricted)

10) confirm computer has latest updates/patches for OS and Office

11) confirm antivirus is up to date

12) configure default printer

13) configure VPN if needed

14) leave intro sheet for new user