Creating a System Image Fails

Windows 7 should have been able to handle the multi boot with out the need for individual boot loaders this over complicates the process IMHO

kornfan71 said:

-This one is tricky. I have a multiboot system, with Windows XP and Windows 7 on a disk together.

Did you shrink the drive and create a new partition with the unallocated space using something like Gparted Live?

I'm trying to backup to an NTFS drive. I've tried backing up to other drives...that's not the problem.
As far as the way my computer boots, I've had problems when using Grub2, Windows 7 and Windows XP together, so I prefer to split up the Win7 and XP bootloaders, rather than have XP load from Windows 7's.
Greg, I did use GParted to set everything up. Do you think that could be a problem? Better yet, how would I go about fixing it?

kornfan71 said:

Greg, I did use GParted to set everything up. Do you think that could be a problem? Better yet, how would I go about fixing it?

I don't know. I used it as well is the reason I ask and yes Windows Backup or System Image willl not work for me. My preferred Imaging app will not work either. It shows C partition as an unknown file system with total space and used space being the same amount, all used up. I've done quite a bit of searching, tried all approaches and nothing works. Macrium, Paragon, Drive Image XML are not an option. They didn't work right even when I only had the one partition with XP. Let me re-phrase, they would partially work. With one of them, the boot disk wouldn't work, another the boot disk worked but wouldn't read the drive where the backups were and the other one could never verify that the image backup was good.

Well update for me! I uninstalled Eaz-Fix/Drive Image, rebooted and Win 7 System Image worked, I think,lol. My USB storage drive just got 25gigs smaller but dang if I can find where the image is stored. There is a folder named WindowsImageBackup, but it shows 0 bytes. Any ideas?

Win 7 system image fails
Hi

I have a completly fresh install of Win 7 Ultimate 32 bit and I am unable to create an image or backup to another drive. A Volume Shadow Copy Service failed (0x0807800A1) and the writer experienced a non transient error (0x800423F4). I have checked VSS and SPP in services and both are running. Oddly I have 2 laptops (Toshiba and Sony) both running Win 7 Ultimate 32 bit and both are able to create a DVD image and backup to another drive. All that is installed on the drive apart from OS is Office 2007, and no virus checker installed.
I purchased Win 7 after seeiing how the 2 works laptops performed. Surly Microsoft realise by now that they have a problem yet seem to be doing nothing. I have tried the various suggestions on this forum but am still unable to get it to work.

If any one can help I would be gratefull.

Well, I finally found my issue. I have since switched to Win7 Home Premium x64 (and got rid of XP), but ran into the same issue. Turns out Windows wants to be the boot drive (my Linux drive was boot). I swapped that and all is well. (Windows can even use hybrid sleep now, which it could also not do beforehand.)

So, now I just need to figure out how I can get this going so that GRUB is my bootloader, but Windows 7 still can do its thing.....Urg.

Windows is too picky!

kornfan71 said:

Well, I finally found my issue. I have since switched to Win7 Home Premium x64 (and got rid of XP), but ran into the same issue. Turns out Windows wants to be the boot drive (my Linux drive was boot). I swapped that and all is well. (Windows can even use hybrid sleep now, which it could also not do beforehand.)

So, now I just need to figure out how I can get this going so that GRUB is my bootloader, but Windows 7 still can do its thing.....Urg.

Windows is too picky!

Are you saying that Linux was your C:? I'm kinda curious about this since at the beginning, I tried to do the Windows System Image but it would fail everytime with the same error that's been posted all over the net. I'm dual booting XP(C partition) and Win 7(E partition). I attributed my failures to the Drive Image app of Eaz-Fix system restore. I uninstalled Eaz-Fix which in turn uninstalled it's Drive Image app and was able to then use Windows System Image for backups.

No, Win7 was still my C:.
Here's how my computer was:

Linux drive:
MBR: GRUB
P1 - FAT32
Extended:
P2 - Ext4 -- Grub files here
P3 - Ext4
P4 - Ext3
P5 - Swap

Then the Windows drive:
MBR: Windows bootmgr
P1 - NTFS (system reserved) bootmgr files here
P2 - NTFS (Win7)
P3 - NTFS (Files)
(I set it up with bootmgr in the MBR so I could at least use Windows if I ran into a GRUB issue.)

The Linux drive was the first HDD to boot from in BIOS (DVD is still the first boot device).
Windows was second.
The boot order didn't change the drive letters at all, AFAIK.

I would just chainload bootmgr from GRUB when I wanted to use Windows.

Well, now the Windows drive is my first boot HDD (again, DVD is still 1st), and I'm using NeoGrub (in EasyBCD Beta 2) to chainload Grub2 when I want to use Linux...

Windows doesn't share well with others....

system image is not allowed to be created on a FAT drive right? that might be the source of the problem