I finally found it. I’ve been searching all week. The golden disc shone like a beacon. There I was, on my hands and knees scrabbling about on the floor in the computer room. I had one of those small blue light torches and was trying to look under the cabinet as that was the last place I thought it might be.

Windows 2003 x64 Enterprise Edition - the master disc. That’s what was missing. And there I was shining the light when I see a glint and I knew instantly what it was. It was face down of course which is how it reflected so well. And where was it?

It was inside a server. Not in the disc tray, no that would be too easy. The server, a mini tower, had long since been decomissioned and its side was hanging off. There, inside the case at the bottom of the server, face down, I saw the disc and I knew instantly what it was.

What a relief. Now, I can get on with reconfiguring the Virtual Server to add SMTP/POP services because that machine ( DL380 G4 ) will also be used to host our Sharepoint Services.