Windows 7: Will Repair Install work with Windows Anytime Upgrade?

I installed the 30 day trial of Acronis before starting on this adventure, I will purchase a license before the trial expires. Thank you for your help.

Have you tried Windows 7 Backup imaging?

I use it on all of our machines here, keeping a copy in a primary formatted partition for easy detection, copied to external in case of HD failure.

Have used it several times now and it is fast, flawless, built-in and free.

I had it set up, untill it stopped working, never had a chance to try a restore. Tried backing up to internal and external drives, changing the fileset backed up, could not get it to work. I Had some serious problems with this system that seemed to start around the time I installed Paragon 10 Backup(free), Windows backup quit working, Windows was hanging up during shutdown, and some applications GUI would not start, the process would start, but no GUI. Maybe Win 7 does not like 3'rd party backups? I think I might stick with Windows Image Backup.

Have you tried Windows 7 Backup imaging since you did the clean re-install when you couldn't do the repair install? Did that fix it?

If you reinstalled any 3rd party imaging software which might be causing this, then try System Restore to before them if the problem persists now.

If it's Paragon corrupting system (Backup center) files then if you can't SysRestore before it: uninstall, set restore point, delete Paragon in first two registry hive's Software keys, then run sfc /scannow to check system rile integrity.

If none of these work to get your Windows 7 backup imaging working, use MS tech support which comes with Anytime and blame it on that to get their excellent support.

Windows backup just completed successfully, I have not installed any other backup software, or much else for that matter. I will be cautious reinstalling apps, dont want the same problems again.

You have a baseline now with that image, better than disappearing Restore points.

I store each of my computers' image in a primary partition for easy detection, but they then also need to be copied to an external in case of HDD failure.

Test them by booting from Windows 7 installer/repair disk selecting Repair console then "Recover Using an Image" to see if it auto-detects the image both on partiton and plugged external. It will need to be named the same WindowsImageBackup and in the root of any drive.

Sounds like more good advice, I wil do as you suggest.