Directory Services Restore from Physical to Hyper-V Virtual Windows Server 2003

I ran across a strange issue when trying to recover a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory system state backup from a physical server to a Hyper-V Virtual Server. I had to install the Hyper-V Integration Services, uninstall Hyper-V Integration Services before I restored, then reinstall Integration Services. I don't think this would occur in Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2.

I did the following:
1) Backup the system state of a physical server using ntbackup (replaced by Windows Server Backup or wbadmin in Windows Server 2008 and above).
2) Install Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 on the destination virtual machine.
3) Install Hyper-V Integration Services on the virtual machine.
4) Make sure the Virtual Machine is NOT on the production network (Internal/Private Virtual Network).
5) Click add role, choose Directory Services (Active Directory) as the first server using the same domain name being restored (also same computer name and static IP address).
6) Add other used roles (we had installed WINS).
7) Remove Integration Services .
8) Restart in Directory Services Recovery Mode (Press F8 between the boot screen and before the Windows boot screen and select DSRM).
9) Restore the system state using ntbackup
10) Restart into Safe Mode (to allow Windows to detect the hardware changes).
11) Insert the Windows Server 2003 install CD and repair Windows.
12) Reinstall Hyper-V Integration Services.

These steps reflect my own experiences. I'm just experimenting. Do not use or rely upon it. Instead, refer to Microsoft's documentation (knowledge base, MSDN, or TechNet artiles) and professionals for the correct policies and procedures. There are better ways to go from a physical server to a virtual server (like Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2).

...Or don't. Network Adapters in Windows Registry

Let's say you learned where Windows stores network card/adapter information in the registry, and you were playing with recovering a backup of Windows Server 2003 Active Directory to different, virtual hardware. Don't decide it a good idea to clean out the network adapters in the registry by uninstalling the virtual adapter and deleting all adapters in the registry. It's a bad idea.

I have been playing around with a few things: recovering Active Directory to different hardware (to a virtual PC/server), seizing FSMO (Flexible Single Master of Operations or operations master) roles, transferring operations master roles, a Windows Server 2008 R2 domain controller and adprep, and Domain Rename. I've done this three times successfully and once unsuccessfully.

During the unsuccessful attempt, I backed up the system state of our first production domain controller running Windows Server 2003 R2. I created a virtual machine running Windows Server 2003, placed it on a virtual switch not paired to a physical network card, and promoted it to a domain controller. I restarted in Active Directory Recovery Mode, restored the backup, and rebooted to Safe Mode. I had to repair Windows because I had restored an OEM copy of Windows Server 2003 R2 onto a volume license copy of Windows Server 2003. I uninstalled the network adapter from Device Manager and went into the registry and removed the network adapters. All I can say for certain is after restarting, Windows could not start the virtual network adapter. It said one or more files could not be found. I tried using the installation media and the local drive as the source for updated drivers and tried reinstalling the virtual machine additions, but it didn't help. My thought is that Active Directory is bound to network adapters. I notice domain controllers take longer to start up than other Windows Servers at the Preparing network connections phase of startup.

In some cases, this sort of difficulty would have me digging into the situation. In this case, my reaction was I'm not doing that again.