Problem when using ERUNT to restore Windows 7 registry:

i love system images as well, but doing a full clone of the partition takes quite a bit of time compared to clicking on the erunt icon.

who's used the win7 system imager - does THAT actually work?

ok - i'll jump on the acronis bandwagon once i'm actually back to a booting 7-system.

as for erunt - i just found out that the version i'd used was from 2004, e.g. before mr. lederer claims to have developed 64 bit compatibility.

in any case, i'm sure that the registry backups it creates are pristine, but something else is preventing their use. i suspect it has something to do with either a permissions issue, or user accounts not being backed up / restored correctly - or not matching what the registry backup has.

on both BSOD-instances the "other open user accounts" option was selected. the automated erunt backups don't seem to have backed up the main user account. they have 2 user account directories, one of them i think \default, but not sure about the other.

also, the BSDs i get when attempting to boot with the erunt-backed-up registry happen at the point when the system is starting to load the user-specific desktop.

Hi, zdoe. Sorry to hear that your system got messed up from ERUNT. I use the most current version but it causes the Task Scheduler problems I originally posted about. There is another registry backup program called RegBak that I've been using but as of now have never tried to restore my registry with it. The download package for it includes 32 bit and 64 bit versions and works exactly like ERUNT. ERUNT worked perfectly with Windows XP but even though it claims to be compatible with Windows 7 64 bit systems there seems to be some flaws. The way I fixed the problems it caused to some of my Task Scheduler tasks was to do a System Restore. The thing is though is that I always used ERUNT in the event that System Restore fails so the situation seems to be reversed. I've found that System Restore has never failed if done in the Safe Mode. However, you can't undo the restore if done in Safe Mode. Good luck and thanks for your reply (better late than never).
Mark

Mcd73165 - in my current situation, of course, i can't get to safe mode to try the restore points.

now i re-read your concerns at the head of this thread - suggest:
- remove the hidden partition. it's a bad idea to begin with, as it complicates system-cloning. i don't have one - if the disk is already partitioned when you install 7 it doesn't create it, but stores that info on the OS-partition. i'm sure there's a way to do this after the fact.
- tasks - haven't played with 7 enough to know for sure, but my understanding is that the tasks are an .XML file that you could backup / restore separately.

all of this of course is assuming that the rest of erunt backup/restore actually works, which is currently NOT my experience.

DG - even if it's conceptually faulty (your latest user data will be lost), i wouldn't mind system restore saving more stuff, if it actually worked. in by current BSOD i could see a list of restore points, but the system wouldn't let me restore to them.

i DID just also try to restore a .reg backup from the winRE command prompt. this could work in theory as the registry is not open in the OS. but after importing a good chunk of it, the system reports "could not be imported." not sure if it then reverted back, or kept the entries it already imported. in any case, still BSOD. and importing a .reg would only fix the problem if it actually overwrote the keys where the problem is, which is not sure as it could be in keys added since the backup. the way to go would be to reCreate the registry from the .reg backup, but don't know how to do such a thing.

whether it's erunt or some similar replacement for it, that's the way to go.

Zdoe, thanks for your advice. I assigned a drive letter to the hidden System Partition (a long time ago) and had no problem with creating an image with Marcium. Above and beyond that, I'm not going to mess with it. I've never tried restoring the image however. I wish that someone could update ERUNT so that it definitely would work flawlessly on Windows 7 64 bit machines. It would be nice to hear from someone that has done an ERUNT restoration on a Windows 7 64 bit system and had no problems with it. Good luck getting your system running again zdoe and thanks to all that have replied or have gotten involved with my thread. Much appreciated.
Mark

ok - now i've actually specifically tried it with the 2005 erunt - every recovery-attempt so far results in BSOD.

e.g. - i'm done with erunt until there's an update, which appears unlikely.

go to revo! bulgaria rules. not as elegant/no nonsense, and no command line to initiate the backup, but it works. & kudos to gregrocker who told me about it.