Windows 7: System Image Recovery

Here's all the drives.

When restoring an image you will be presented with two possible basic decisions
A) Format and repartition disks
B) Exclude disks

For decision (A) the format option can be:
1) Grayed out and selected.
You are forced to have the whole disk formatted and repartitioned to match the partition structure of the disk the image was made from.
This can occur when restoring an image to a new disk or the original disk with a modified partition structure.
Data on other partitions on the disk you are restoring to will be lost.

2) Grayed out and unselected.
You are not given the option to format and repartition the disk. This will occur if you are restoring Windows from a partition on the same disk.

3) Not grayed out and unselected.
Here you have the option to select format the whole disk and repartition or not. In this case the disk the image was taken from has a matching partition structure to the disk you are restoring the image to. By not selecting the format and repartition option your image will be restored and other partitions untouched such as valuable data partitions.
This is the most common choice to select.

When the format and repartition option is selected then
B) Exclude disks
should be selected to deselect any other attached disks. Otherwise, they will be formatted.

Thank you MJF, I added a note in the tutorial for this.

Yes, good info, thx.
However I don't get to this step when I select any one of the system images that were made before I took it in for service.
When I select one of these system images and hit next, I get the error message instead of the Format Options screen.

What does vssadmin list shadows give you?

When I boot from the Windows Recovery disc command prompt doesn't recognize vssadmin.

Why did you run the command from the Rec env ?

Run it in Windows.

Your instructions implied the steps must be from outside windows.

Anyway, here's a sample of Shadows copies around the time frame I'm interested in.
Are Shadow copies complete system images or just some incremental file/folder changes?
And how do use these to restore my system?
By system here I mean the entire environment including O/S, apps, registry, etc which is what I assumed a system image is.
Thx!

Yes that looks promising.

I assume the o/s letters are the same - i.e. your new installation calls itself C - and your old installation also called itself C

You need to do this outside, so d/l this file - unzip it with 7-zip , then rt click and run as admin on RunMeAsAmin.cmd. It will make a boot disc for you in a few seconds.

Here.zip

Boot it up.

From the menu select Explore and find the leters for your Backup drive and your Windows drive.

Then click Shadows - Shadowpe program will pop up.

Select your backup drive in the dropdown, then click Get Shadows. In a few secs they will pop up. Higher numbers are more recent. Have a look thru and find the one you want to restore from.

Go back to the Explore app:

If you have enough space on your windows drive you can make a folder on the windows drive called windows.old and
move these folders from your windows drive into it:

Windows, Users, Program Data , Program Files, Program Files (x86).

If you don't have enough space , just delete those 5 folders from your windows drive.

Copy the 5 folders listed above from your selected Shadow copy onto your Windows drive.

It isn't very quick - took me 30 mins last time I did it.

You need to check all has copied across - so expand the copied folders , and check against the ones in your Shadow Copy - anything missing - just copy it across.

Exit Shadowpe app.

Reboot pc.

You're done .

I just made a small change to Here.zip - new one attached to previous post. It will make copying slightly easier for you.