Find and restore a good copy of the metabase. There are three possible locations for these backup copies:

  1. Use the Find feature to do a search for the Metabase.bin.bak file in the WinntSystem32Inetsrv folder.
  2. If the Metabase.bin.bak file is not found, search for a Metabase.bak in the WinntSystem32Inetsrv.
  3. If Metabase.bin.bak is still not found, locate an offline copy.

When you locate a good backup copy of Metabase.bin, proceed to the following steps to restore the metabase:

  1. At the command prompt, type the following command to stop the Web services:
    Net Stop IISADMIN /Y
  2. In the WinntSystem32Inetsrv folder, find and rename the Metabase.bin file to Metabase.old.
  3. Rename Metabase.bin.bak or Metabase.bin (whichever was detected) to Metabase.bin
  4. At the command prompt, attempt to start the World Wide Services by using the following commands:
    Net Start W3SVC
    Net Start MSFTPSVC
    Net Start MSSMTPSVC
    Net Start MSNNTPSVC

If these steps do not resolve the problem, you can restore Metabase.bin from an offline tape backup.

NOTE: When you restore from a backup file, configuration information can be lost depending on the age of the backup copy. You can verify how old the copy is by using the Time/Date Stamp on the Metabase.bin.bak file.