The "Recover your server wizard" crashes in Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essential, Windows Home Server 2011 or Windows Storage Server 2011 Essential

Consider the following scenario:

1. You install a Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essential, Windows Home Server 2011 or Windows Storage Server 2011 Essential
2. You restore your server to a previous backup or perform a factory reset (headless scenario) after a successful backup
3. You start the recovery process from a non-network joined client machine.
4. You insert the recovery DVD on the client machine, launch setup.exe from the disc. (Note the setup.exe may also be automatically launched when the DVD is inserted)
5. In the Recover your Server Wizard, Click any of the help links in the wizard.
6. The wizard will crash

Note: This issue will not happen when the client is joined to the network via connector.

This issue occurs because the help link doesn’t work when setup.exe is launched directly under the volume root directory.

Instead of directly launch the setup.exe from DVD; You can launch the recovery wizard from the hard disk or USB drive.

1. Create a folder under the server hard drive or a USB drive, e.g. d:\temp
2. Copy all the contents (The whole DVD contents) to the newly created folder, keeping the same folder structures.
3. Launch the setup.exe from the folder.

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