SharePoint User Group UK

I had to reboot my SPS 2 server last week and it had a failed SPS 3 upgrade on it I'd forgotten about, but I thnk it's trashed all my sites.  I have a backup made with STSADM but it won't restore or overwrite anything - tells me it can't find an instance...

"The server Instance specified was not found"  etc

I'm thinking of just biting the bullet and starting again with v3 but I have a lot of scripts and SQL procedures that I've written over the years that I have stored on it for others to access, plus a lot of our Health and Saftey information and so I really need it back.  I only have two Win2003 servers and one is my DC so I don't really want to use that - everything else is 2000.    A couple of the sites were customised a bit.

Can anyone offer any advice?  I diodn't se up the server and one of the guys who did has now left the company.  I understand that I should restore the backup into a DB that has the same SPs and updates applied but how can I find that out?  (very unimpressed with that, btw).  Can I restore it into a parallel install?

The server it's on just runs Sharepoint Services and one other web app.

<EDIT>

Just checked - the original DB is still intact (AFAIK) and shows 268MB.  The master DB is 13.5MB, so I suspect that's ok too.  Is there any way I can reconnect the database to the admin site - also I can't find the original sites anywhere, can someone tell me what the default path should be?

Did you get this sorted?  Post is some time ago...

You need to restore your DBs to a SPS 2003 farm.  Is your farm still functional?  Is Central Admin working?  How were your sites logically setup (topology)?  Did you have backups of your sites as well as your content databases?

Mark

 

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If it bleeds, we can kill it.

Seems to be ok - a few issues though.

Every time I try to run stsadm I get errors and don't know why.  For example, if I try to get it to back up, but I get the following error:

stsadm.exe -o backup -url http://sp-v3-01 -filename "c:\bak\pw_sharepointbackup_10062008.dat" -overwrite

Unhandled Exception: System.BadImageFormatException: The format of the file 'Microsoft.SharePoint' is invalid.
File name: "Microsoft.SharePoint"   at Microsoft.SharePoint.StsAdmin.SPStsAdmin.Main(String[] args)

=== Pre-bind state information ===
LOG: DisplayName = Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 (Fully-specified)
LOG: Appbase = D:\
LOG: Initial PrivatePath = NULL
Calling assembly : stsadm, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null.
===

LOG: Publisher policy file is not found.
LOG: Host configuration file not found.
LOG: Using machine configuration file from D:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\config\machine.config.
LOG: Post-policy reference: Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neut
ral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c
LOG: Attempting download of new URL file:///D:/Microsoft.SharePoint.DLL.


Happens EVERY time I run stsadm.  I can't depoly templates or web parts, backup or anything.  Any clues anyone?