I did something really stupid... deleted "default website" and reinstalled IIS

[jmwills]

How far back do your Shadow Copies go on that drive?

[Mycophiles]

How far back do your Shadow Copies go on that drive?

Ok, now I'm feeling like I've been willy-nilly about all this.  The Dashboard for windows essentials is gone.  The "shadow copies" I'm guessing are the backups of the other computers on the network and when I went to open the dashboard for windows essentials I can't find it anywhere.  When I looked at the Roles and Features it is no longer checked.  I don't know how that happened. 

 

Or are you talking about other 'shadow copies' like of the OS?  There are no backups that I've seen of the OS.

[jmwills]

Yep, reinstall time.

[Drashna Jaelre]

Of course I've done a backup of all the computers on the network but I haven't done a backup of the server.  So I'm going to end up having to do a restore from disk. 

Honestly, this is more important that backing up the clients.  Always, always make sure you have a good backup of the server.

[jmwills]

^^^^ What he said.

[ikon]

In the end, I think data backup is what's most important. Depending on how you have your network set up that might, or might not, mean the Windows Server Backup is most important. If all you data is on the server, and your Windows Server Backup includes all your data, then that's most important. If, like me, you only use Windows Server Backup  to back up the server's OS drive, then not so much.

 

That said, it's still really, really handy to have the Server's OS drive backed up, simply so it is possible - and pretty easily too - to recover from goofups like this one.

[Robert Pearman]

If all you did was remove IIS and nothing else, you may have been able to recreate the Default Web Site, as the data itself would have remained on the drives.

 

There are also two other websites you potentially would have to recreate, but again the files themselves would still be there.

 

There are some customisations that need to be done to the websites once they are live, but not a huge amount.

 

However, depending on the size of the network a reinstall may have been preferable.