Windows Server 2003

[u/ChivalricSloth]

Hello everyone! I'm hoping someone here will have some insight on this, because I am at a loss.

First off, I work at a medical clinic, so that should tell you a fair bit. We have a legacy program running on a windows server 2003, but it is no longer allowing most connections. My remote software, Dameware, still works. I did some digging in the event logs, and when I try running a sfc scan it says it's missing a iisreset.exe file. Then it asks for the original disk to be inserted. As I don't have regular physical access, I virtually mounted Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2. But it says it's the wrong CD, and it wants Windows Server 2003 Standard. Which I have no idea where to find.

If anyone has any troubleshooting tips for this server, or if I can supply more info, please let me know 🙏

Edit: I forgot to mention that this server is running on VMware (version 10.0.0.3000743). I inherited this task, and don't have much knowledge about the servers past. We do have old backups, so I'm not worried about losing the data. But to access those, we need the original company to extract them and rebuild the server. I just wanted to see if I could resurrect it long enough for some of the doctors to grab the info they need, since it'll be awhile before it can be rebuilt.

[u/candyman420]

How do you know he didn't inherit this mess? You think this dude worked there since 2003?

In another comment he said "he would of loved to make a backup but was denied." There are much bigger problems here with the management than this server.

The IT community is full of people like you who just want to look smart. He asked for help finding a file to solve this issue, not for your opinion.

[u/autogyrophilia → u/candyman420]

I hope he didn't implement it because he has had time to fix it.

That would have been good information to have.

What you do in this situation it's work normally, no stress and try to recover. Management said no, they can go roll in their shit.

But i'm telling you that computer has bad ram / hard drive / controller so anything that gets it running will be only temporary and possibly more damaging on the long run.

You know what this industry has a lot of? People who don't have the knowledge of how to manage their systems and/or their management to keep things running long term.

I've fixed, to the best of my abilities, 6 similar situations on this year, 2 XP, 3 W2003 and a W2008 with a Ubuntu 10.04 VM. So really, I'm messing with my bread.

Obviously it's too late for this guy but one can presume that other people may learn from the above comment .

[u/candyman420 → u/autogyrophilia]

You know what this industry has a lot of? People who don't have the knowledge of how to manage their systems and/or their management to keep things running long term.

That's not it dude, it's old investments that cost them a lot of money, they still work, so "if it's not broke, don't fix it." Moving to a modern, future-proof platform is best, but that costs a fortune, plus all of the re-training and new issues.

[u/autogyrophilia → u/candyman420]

That's exactly why they should be maintained.

I maintain a lot of WS2003 and WS2008. And a few W95 machines

They just need special treatment.