How to Recover an Active Directory object using the Recycle Bin , 2008 & 2012 Methods

At some point in your career as an Active Directory Domain Administrator you will have the need to recover an AD object (user,computer,OU etc) and the last thing you want to do is an authoritive restore from backup.

In a previous post I show you how to check if the AD Recycle Bin feature is enabled and how to enable it which is the main prerequisite for this post.

In Windows Server 2012:

In Server 2012 it really easy using the Active Directory Administrative Center aka ADAC

1. Open the the ADAC
   
   
   
   
2. Select Deleted Objects
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Right click an object on the right and select Restore or Restore To… then select the location the object should be restored to.
   
   

In Windows Server 2008:

There are 3 ways if you’re in a Windows 2008 environment.

1. Use the ADAC tools installed on a Windows 2012 Server. This will have the same result and procedure as shown above and is by far the easiest.
2. Option 2 is using LPD.exe ,Microsoft has an easy to follow article detailing this procedure.
3. Using PowerShell.
• use the Get-ADObject command if you want a list of deleted objects
• once found you can simply restore the object using Restore-ADObject (See Example below of a computer object being restored. Same applies to users and other AD objects )
  
  
  

That's It!

I hope this post has been informative for you. Send a shout out if you found this post helpful or comment if you have any questions.

Check if Active Directory Recycle Bin is enabled and enable AD Recycle Bin

Back in the day when I started my AD journey, there wasn’t an easy way to recover an accidentally deleted Active Directory object. Back then I found a very helpful tool for Windows Server 2003 and 2008 called ADRestore.net

However, since Windows Server 2008 R2 they introduced a feature called the Recycle Bin, making recovery of AD objects allot easier. This is not enabled by default however and once enabled you cannot disable it.

So here are 2 easy steps to check if it's enabled and also how to enable it. Once complete you will want to review a previous post on how to actually restore an object using the recycle bin with methods for both 2008 and 2012


Check if Recycle Bin is enabled

1. Open up an admin PowerShell window and use the following command to check if ad recycle bin is enabled
   
   If  “Enabled Scopes” is empty then it is disabled. The below shows off a disabled environment.
   
   
   


2. To enable the Recycle Bin feature simply run the following command from an Admin PowerShell windows.
   
   
   
   

I hope this post has been informative for you.