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#1
Windows 7 System Image not finding image files
I had this issue for a week. I tried to restore a system image I had created in October of last year but each time I tried to recover it from the System Recovery Disc, there were no images found. I was driving me up the wall and no one on the various forums I looked at seemed to have the solution. I found supposed fixes involving the incompatibility of USB3 with Windows 7, disc drivers being required, the image needing to be at the root of the drive it was stored on etc, etc. None of them worked. My IT department at work were also worse than useless, suggesting I reinstall my MAC's OS and Bootcamp. That one made me wonder if they were actually listening to what I was telling them.
THE SOLUTION THAT WORKED.
It's down to the naming convention of the System Image Utility. The files are created with default names WHICH MUST NOT BE CHANGED, eg: WindowsImageBackup/PC Name/MM/DD/YYYY:00:00. I had four images and since this default naming convention is useless for identifying what the images contain, I had given them friendly names. WRONG! If the default names below the WindowsImageBackup level are changed in any way, the Image Recovery utility will not see them at all and the 'images to recover' list will be blank.
It's a particularly bad piece of programming to have a naming convention that cannot be changed lest the system fall over completely. What are you supposed to do if you have more than one image? Names and dates don't tell you much but it's all Microsoft gives you. I also think that this, plus not providing a 'browse' button that would enable you to point the utility at any image, anywhere, is particularly incompetent.
I'll be using Macrium Reflect from now on.