Warez,
Please note that I am an automation engineer for Windows 2k and XP deployments and that I have been supporting enterprise networks for the last 7 years, so may be what I know doesn't apply to your realm of expertise, but I do know what I'm talking about.
In Windows 2003 domains, the machine as well as users all maintain an authenticated state to the domain. This allows for multiple layers of security that will allow them to either be allow from the machine and the user, but not singularily. I.E, you can't take a machine that isn't part of the domain and hope to log onto the domain with your network account. The machine has to be part of the domain to do that. same goes for an account. You can't attempt to logon to a machine without an account, and you can't use a network account to logon to a machine that you are not conected to network and domain with.
anyway, if you setup a domain, the default behavior of that domain is ussually tailored to a security requirement you or a security minded person defines. Let's take ours for example.
in our network, if a machine is offline for 60 days and attemps to reconnect to the network, the machine will not be allowed on, cause we expired the machine account. This is a security step to prevent machines that have not gotten updates from antivirus or Windows update from coming back in and infecting the rest of the network.
anyway, from what I was getting from the poster, what he has done, was capture and image of this machine from a few weeks ago. No sysprep involved or anything, just a straight backup fo this machine. His intention was to use that image to restore the same machine back to a working state from several weeks previous. This is done a lot, and oftern, by here is the problem.
The domain and machine password, that allows the machine to comunicate with the domain, was changed automatically after a period, 7 days I think is the default. Anyway, since the domain had updated the machine within the time period, as the machine was online and could be updated, the system had a new password for that machine. Meaning that when he restored the amchine to a previous state, before the password was changed, the trust relationship could not be restored to that machine due to the password not being what it (the domain) was looking for.
This is very common in VMware environments, like the one we use for scripting and testing applications. If you revert you VMware system to far back, you loose the domain conection, cause the passwords are not the same any more.
Also, this kind of applicaiton is done in a lot of environment, it's actually something symantec did with Ghost enterprise a long time ago, and it work wonderfully when setup and maintained. They only problem is making sure you don't go back beyond the password cycle, or you keep up with it.
hope that clears up what I was saying.
Please note that I am an automation engineer for Windows 2k and XP deployments and that I have been supporting enterprise networks for the last 7 years, so may be what I know doesn't apply to your realm of expertise, but I do know what I'm talking about.
In Windows 2003 domains, the machine as well as users all maintain an authenticated state to the domain. This allows for multiple layers of security that will allow them to either be allow from the machine and the user, but not singularily. I.E, you can't take a machine that isn't part of the domain and hope to log onto the domain with your network account. The machine has to be part of the domain to do that. same goes for an account. You can't attempt to logon to a machine without an account, and you can't use a network account to logon to a machine that you are not conected to network and domain with.
anyway, if you setup a domain, the default behavior of that domain is ussually tailored to a security requirement you or a security minded person defines. Let's take ours for example.
in our network, if a machine is offline for 60 days and attemps to reconnect to the network, the machine will not be allowed on, cause we expired the machine account. This is a security step to prevent machines that have not gotten updates from antivirus or Windows update from coming back in and infecting the rest of the network.
anyway, from what I was getting from the poster, what he has done, was capture and image of this machine from a few weeks ago. No sysprep involved or anything, just a straight backup fo this machine. His intention was to use that image to restore the same machine back to a working state from several weeks previous. This is done a lot, and oftern, by here is the problem.
The domain and machine password, that allows the machine to comunicate with the domain, was changed automatically after a period, 7 days I think is the default. Anyway, since the domain had updated the machine within the time period, as the machine was online and could be updated, the system had a new password for that machine. Meaning that when he restored the amchine to a previous state, before the password was changed, the trust relationship could not be restored to that machine due to the password not being what it (the domain) was looking for.
This is very common in VMware environments, like the one we use for scripting and testing applications. If you revert you VMware system to far back, you loose the domain conection, cause the passwords are not the same any more.
Also, this kind of applicaiton is done in a lot of environment, it's actually something symantec did with Ghost enterprise a long time ago, and it work wonderfully when setup and maintained. They only problem is making sure you don't go back beyond the password cycle, or you keep up with it.
hope that clears up what I was saying.
