And not just mine - several other hosts had the same problem.
After a lot of hullaballo and confusion we've got the mess straightened out.
Symptoms?
- One host was missing NIC cards in it's control panel
- Operators reported being asked to install software
- Operators reported being asked to run chkdsk
- Many many services were off
- Could not view events in Event Viewer - double click on 'em and they just glare at you insolently.
- Could not launch services in Services Manager
- Login as an established user and ... greeted with the 'first time login' nonsense
- The applications - 3rd party non MS stuff - would not launch and claimed they were not registered.
Most of the hosts were fixed by Resting the security settings to default [1]. One host would not boot following this fix and was restored from snapshot.
The only commonality we can find is Server 2003 SP2 and IIS [2] and they were all VMWare ESX guests.
What in the ring-tailed rambling heck?
[1] http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=313222
[2] Amusing conversation with a vendor about that point:
Me: Why does your application require IIS?
Him: Our application doesn't use IIS.
Me: Well it won't install without IIS being on the box.
Him: Ga-wha?
