Recreating Central Adminitration without the Content DB

So, a customer of ours decided to do a few things with their
SharePoint site... They deleted the Central Admin content database
AND removed the website from IIS. Now, they can't access Central
Admin but also can't really run anything via stsadm because the
content db is missing.

They have no backups of the content db either.

Any ideas how I can recreate the central admin site without risking
the rest of the web app content dbs or sites? When I try to run the
configuration wizard again, I get errors all over the place.

thanks in advance,
Jeff

dggcoop
Fri Jul 25 14:45:04 CDT 2008

Since there are no SQL backups (WHAT??? Who has SQL installed with no
maintenance plan???), I believe your best course of action is going to be:

1) Take away admin rights from whoever made a mess of the installation
2) Rebuild the SharePoint server, minus the sites
3) Attach the content databases to bring the sites back into the configuration

Of course this is a high level summary (I left out the part about backing up
the content databases, doing this installation on a different server [at
least for testing your recovery method], etc.).

If you need more info on how to do this (after checking your handy
SharePoint book and your favorite search engine :), then let us know.
--
dggcoop, MCTS


"JBK" wrote:

> So, a customer of ours decided to do a few things with their
> SharePoint site... They deleted the Central Admin content database
> AND removed the website from IIS. Now, they can't access Central
> Admin but also can't really run anything via stsadm because the
> content db is missing.
>
> They have no backups of the content db either.
>
> Any ideas how I can recreate the central admin site without risking
> the rest of the web app content dbs or sites? When I try to run the
> configuration wizard again, I get errors all over the place.
>
> thanks in advance,
> Jeff
>

Todd
Sun Jul 27 19:13:27 CDT 2008

If you rerun the SharePoint Configuration Wizard you can rebuild a farm and
attach your existing content databases to your new farm.

tk
"JBK" <jeffkahsen@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:f2b8c62e-7af8-4837-a308-6c66ab351693@r35g2000prm.googlegroups.com...
> So, a customer of ours decided to do a few things with their
> SharePoint site... They deleted the Central Admin content database
> AND removed the website from IIS. Now, they can't access Central
> Admin but also can't really run anything via stsadm because the
> content db is missing.
>
> They have no backups of the content db either.
>
> Any ideas how I can recreate the central admin site without risking
> the rest of the web app content dbs or sites? When I try to run the
> configuration wizard again, I get errors all over the place.
>
> thanks in advance,
> Jeff

dggcoop
Mon Jul 28 00:06:46 CDT 2008

I believe that usually is the way to go, however I suggested the total
rebuild due to what Jeff said in his post "When I try to run the
configuration wizard again, I get errors all over the place. "
--
dggcoop, MCTS


"Todd Klindt [WSS MVP]" wrote:

> If you rerun the SharePoint Configuration Wizard you can rebuild a farm and
> attach your existing content databases to your new farm.
>
> tk
> "JBK" <jeffkahsen@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:f2b8c62e-7af8-4837-a308-6c66ab351693@r35g2000prm.googlegroups.com...
> > So, a customer of ours decided to do a few things with their
> > SharePoint site... They deleted the Central Admin content database
> > AND removed the website from IIS. Now, they can't access Central
> > Admin but also can't really run anything via stsadm because the
> > content db is missing.
> >
> > They have no backups of the content db either.
> >
> > Any ideas how I can recreate the central admin site without risking
> > the rest of the web app content dbs or sites? When I try to run the
> > configuration wizard again, I get errors all over the place.
> >
> > thanks in advance,
> > Jeff
>

JBK
Fri Aug 01 11:55:11 CDT 2008

Yep, Thanks for the insight.

That looks like the safest bet. Backing up the content databases,
performing a complete reinstallation of SharePoint to the point that
the web applications have been recreated, and then running
deletecontentdb on the newly created contentdb and addcontentdb on the
old content db...

Definitely taking admin rights away from whoever was managing it.