Re-image system disk fails error 0x80042412

madkiwi · 20 Feb 2010

I have Windows 7 64 bit on an Asus UL80Vt notebook. Came with a Maxtor 320 GB drive. I want to replace it with an OCZ 60 GB SSD.

I was told the a System image can only go on a drive that is the same size or bigger than the source drive. I read a tutorial on benchmarkreviews.com that said the trick was to use the Shrink Volume command in Drive Management and reduce the size of my C: drive before making the restore image. Its new size was 45 GB.

I then used the Windows system image to make a copy of the drive and saved it on to my Western Digital MyBook. All went well.

Opened the system, swapped out the drives, rebooted to my Windows Repair CD, followed the instructions to get to the System Image Restore option. It found the image on my USB drive, no problem. However when it got to the screen to "Choose additional restore options" the Format and repartition disks option was grayed out and I had a message that I should install drivers for my device. OCZ Agility drives don't have drivers. I think this is important.

Next I chose to proceed and for 2 seconds all looked good until I got a message- "Re-Image your computer. The system image restore failed. No disk that can be used for recovering the system disk can be found." When I click on details a get a bunch of gobbledy-gook about 1) System disk may have been excluded by mistake 2) USB disk may have been assigned as a system disk, 3) An invalid disk may have been assigned as system disk and an error code (0x80042412).

I checked out 1 and 2 and they were fine (each item came with "helpful" hints). So I am guessing 3 is the problem.

The drive shows up in DISKPART. It shows up in the BIOS. It is not formatted, but that should not matter. I am about ready to give up, but before I do I will try just doing a fresh Windows install. If that doesn't work I will post here.

I read a post elsewhere that intimated that Image restores only work to the exact same model hard drive. That can not be true, I have seen too many posts about people doing exactly what I am attempting.

Any help greatly appreciated.

SMOKKINU · 25 Feb 2010

Im having the exact same issue...

madkiwi · 26 Feb 2010

I RMA'd the drive and sent it back to OCZ. If the replacement also has problems then I will have to suspect something with the Asus BIOS or chipset as being incompatible with the SSD.

I am keeping my fingers crossed.

WedgeBob · 18 Dec 2010

Yeah, I'm starting to have this problem. I had the system image written to a 500GB hard drive, and replaced my Acer Aspire's 500GB HDD with an X25-M 120GB, and then I used GParted to repartition the system image drive to around 80 GB, maybe a little less, and this issue occured, too, that I know of. I'm hoping that either Intel's software, and/or another solution may work. Intel makes a cool SSD, tho, just wish that I would have known about the size difference issue "bait and switch" that Microsoft was pulling here for doing Windows Restore to other drives.

ignatzatsonic · 18 Dec 2010

Apparently Paragon is making a tool to get around this:

Paragon Migrate OS to SSD - Overview

You can migrate from a big partition on an HD to a smaller SSD by excluding certain folders. You don't have to resize any partitions.

$20; I have no idea how well it works.

whs · 18 Dec 2010

Well, you guys are skipping a few steps:

1. You have to align the SSD and allocate an active partition before you use it for reimaging.. You can do that attaching it to a USB port - if nothing else. See alignment instructions here: SSD Alignment If you do not align it, you will have a hell of a time with the performance. If you have no active partition, you will not be able to boot.

2. Using the windows7 imaging is very hazardous. It's reliability and complexity does not make it my first choice. But we can discuss the options depending on your current installation.

3. The Paragon tool that was linked above is probably the easiest solution. There you cannot make any big mistakes. And Paragon has years of experience with imaging. I am sure it can be trusted - although I have not used it yet. It is brand new.

Bottom line: Your Agility was probably perfectly good for the task.

WedgeBob · 19 Dec 2010

Ah, cool...thanks for that advice. I was this close to having to buy an OEM copy of Home Premium or so in order to clean install and have to download everything a la carte from Acer which would have been an even bigger pain. Glad you saw this workaround coming. Great Kudos to both you, whs, and ignatzatsonic. That saved me even more money than it's worth.

Although my last ditch effort would be to install an OEM copy of Windows, install Paragon, and see if restoring the WindowsSystemImage would bring the settings back that way...that's probably a long shot. I only wish that I would have known about Paragon before I swapped out the drive to the SSD. Sigh.

EDIT: Well, looks like that's probably what I'm gonna have to do now, guys, hate to break it to you. Just ordered an OEM copy of Home Premium from Amazon, and should expect it just before Christmas, probably. I'm gonna see if installing Paragon and restoring the image from within a clean copy of Windows is the only answer to this. If not, well, I'm gonna have to manually install everything from Acer, which will not be fun.

Dale Mahalko · 09 Jun 2013

(Yes, this is a very old thread. But it is the top Google hit for error 0x80042412.)

I found a solution to this system recovery problem. Basically there's something about the target restore drive that is making Windows 7 reject it as a restore candidate. (In my case I'm trying to upgrade from a 256 gig SSD to a 512 meg SSD using system restore.)

The solution is to go to the command prompt and do some preformatting of the target drive/SSD using diskpart.

If you're unfamiliar with diskpart, it is best to unplug / eject your backup drive containing the recovery image, so you don't accidentally destroy it doing the following.

Open the command prompt and type:
diskpart
list disk
(For me my new SSD is disk 0, but could be different for you.)
select disk 0
clean
(clean wipes out all existing drive partitioning.)
create partition primary size=100 align=4096
(aligning improves performance on SSD's and newer hard drives with 4096 byte sectors)
format quick fs=ntfs
active
create partition primary align=4096
format quick fs=ntfs
exit

At this point the target restore drive has been formatted and looks like a generic Windows boot drive, with a 100 meg reserved boot partition, and a second OS/data partition using all remaining space.

Now you can reconnect your restore image drive, and re-imaging onto the new drive works (for me anyway) without a problem.

Disneyprince · 18 Oct 2013

This solution works brilliantly. Thank you Dale.

Yogi76 · 11 Apr 2014

I just wanted to say thanks to Dale, as well. His suggestion worked perfectly.

On a related note, it seems like every time I go to restore from a system image created using the built-in Windows backup tool, I get some type of error that needs to be resolved. I'm wondering if that's why Microsoft has de-emphasized their built-in backup tool so much in Windows 8.1.