How to perform a non-authoritative SYSVOL restoration

If you are facing issues with some Group Policies or scripts not available on DC(s) in the SYSVOL domain folder to a specific Domain Controller or if you have realized that the GPOs are not up to date, this post shows how to fix that by performing a non-authoritative Sysvol restore on FRS.

This procedure is due only if your environment is using FRS to replicate SYSVOL. It is not applicable to DFSR environment.

On the failed Domain Controller execute the following steps:

1 - Open the prompt as administrator and run: net stop ntfrs;

2 - Open services.msc and set "File Replication" service as Manual;

3 - Open regedit, and edit the registry key to the value "d2":

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NtFrs\Parameters\Backup/Restore\Process at Startup\BurFlags

4 - On the prompt, now run the command: net start ntfrs;

5 - Set "File Replication" service as Automatic;

6 - Open Event Viewer and look for the event ID 13566 and 13516 in the File Replication Service.

In the case the above steps doesn't work, try the following:

1 - Copy the script folder from a healthy DC, and paste it on c:\Sysvol\sysvol\contoso.com of the failed DC;

2 - Set the value "1" for the registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Netlogon\Parameters\sysvolReady

3 - Restart the services netlogon and ntfrs.

For any doubts or suggestions, please leave a comment below.