Deleting A Missing File

[BMEMike]

Ok, here's the deal - I help a friend run a site and the "net" command stopped working on the machine. I went and checked for net.exe and it was nowhere to be found (should be in \System32). This is a 2000 Server, btw.

So we got a copy from another 2k server and went to copy it over and it wouldn't allow us to do so. I have a screen shot of a few file tests:

1. dir /s net.exe - the file isn't in System32 per the OS
2. dir /s net2.exe - this is our copy - and you can see that it's there
3. copy net2.exe net.exe - this fails, no useful error
4. rename net2.exe net.exe - this fails because the OS thinks there's already a "net.exe" file
5. del net.exe - this fails because the OS thinks there's *NOT* a "net.exe" file

Screen Shot Of Command Prompt

UGH!!!

I rebooted the machine and ran a chkdsk on it (took forever) and that didn't solve the problem. Since this is a production machine about 550 miles away from me, I'm somewhat limited to Terminal Services and can't do fun things like boot into safe mode, slave out the disk or boot off of a CD into the Emergency Recovery Console.

Does anyone have any tools or suggestions that might shed some light on this? I'm starting to run out of ideas.

 

[office politics]

why not just run net2?

 

[BMEMike]

We have temporarily moved net.exe to the WINNT folder, so we can use the NET command. In addition to that, there's the net1.exe file in \System32 that we could use... but I want to "fix the machine" - not just ignore the problem.

I understand you're looking to give me this functionality back, but that's not the problem... the problem is the inability to copy net.exe back into the \System32 folder without receiving these very odd errors.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

[BMEMike]

Friendly bump...