ntdsutil auth restore failure

I have installed Windows 2000 SP2 and performed a successful restore. Before rebooting, I try to do an ntdsutil auth restore which fails with the following errors.

Any ideas?

Opening DIT database..
Failed to recover database from external backup. Error 0x2(The system cannot
find the file specified.).

Authoritative Restore failed.

Error 8000ffff parsing input – illegal syntax?