Dedicated Server Restart Help

[codercodes]

Hi, I have a dedicated windows server, I acccidently was in remote desktop and powered that windows down instead of my own, not it wont let me back into remote desktop, and in the control panel it only has hard reboot(dont want to lose all of my data) how can I restart the server?

[Naleksuh]

What exactly are you saying the difference between a "restart" and a "hard reboot" is? You would love any unsaved work either way, if you don't save it first.

That's one of the downsides of full dedicated servers and not VDSes- if you can't do what you want through the OS, the restart through the control panel is the only option you have (and it's lucky to even have that)

[codercodes]

So if I do a hard reboot it won’t erase my server files and everything I had on there? I feel like there should be a way to start the server in the control panel without a hard reboot if it does. I just don’t want to lose all my server stuff

[Naleksuh]

If the machine is already powered down, then a reboot and a start would be the same thing.

With a full dedicated server, you don't get as much control as with a VDS, as there's pretty much no way for the control panel to do anything in the OS. All it can do is restart the dedicated server by standard power cycling

[murk]

so go ahead and do a power cycle? it never restarted with a restart from the os

[TimeX]

A hard restart does not mean a server wipe, if that is what you are thinking. It just means turning the power off and on to get it to restart.

It is not as ideal as a proper shutdown from within Windows, but you already did that anyway, so your work has been saved and the server is already powered down.

[codercodes]

A hard restart does not mean a server wipe, if that is what you are thinking. It just means turning the power off and on to get it to restart.

It is not as ideal as a proper shutdown from within Windows, but you already did that anyway, so your work has been saved and the server is already powered down.

So we did the hard reboot and it is still not letting us into the server. is there any other way to turn it on since we accidentally shut it down while we was in it?

[codercodes]

A hard restart does not mean a server wipe, if that is what you are thinking. It just means turning the power off and on to get it to restart.

It is not as ideal as a proper shutdown from within Windows, but you already did that anyway, so your work has been saved and the server is already powered down.

When we try to connect to remote desktop after doing a hard reboot it says that the server is not started.

[Naleksuh]

When you do a hard reboot from the control panel, it should normally be back up again in 1-2 minutes. If it isn't, something has gone wrong, this probably means Windows is showing the system recovery tools (i.e. "Windows didn't shut down correctly, would you like to do X Y or Z?") which can't be accessed from remote desktop and can only be done via VNC (only available for VDSes, not available for DS) or via the machine directly.

I would recommend hard rebooting a few more times, but if the machine will not get up, it's possible whatever was saved on there has borked the machine and would require manual intervention.

[TimeX]

I would actually recommend against doing multiple power cycles like that. If one doesn't work, it is best to open a Help request and have us take a look for you.

Also, taking 2-3 minutes to boot up is normal after a proper Windows shutdown, like it was in this case. However, in other situations, where Windows did not shut down properly, it is fairly common for a power cycle to result in a disk check during boot, which could mean an added 20 minutes in some cases.