Solved Need to access recovery partition - replaced HDD

[diverdi]

Hi. My "google-fu" isn't giving me a solution so I hope someone here can help.
About a year ago my laptop's HDD started giving errors so I replaced it. As far as I can recall, I did it by cloning the drive (but I can't remember using which program). I got everything working just dandy at the time but recently I've been getting daily BSOD related to ntoskrnl and from what I've read the solution to this is to re-install Windows.

But that's where my problem comes in. When I try to run recovery I get a message saying
"Restore failed - can not find image
path:M:\D2D\Images\*SWM"

I've attached a pic of my disks diskman showing I have a 13Gb recovery partition, Acer (C) and System Reserved (which I gave a drive number to try and access).

The system reserved shows as having 62.5Mb free of 99.9Mb (so its not empty), but if I "explore" it shows "folder is empty".

So how can I get to the recovery file?


FWIW, D2D is enabled in bios, and I've tried Alt-F10 - the computer just beeps continuously until I let go then starts up normally.

Also FWIW, I do have my old HDD in an enclosure so I can "pull" data off that if necessary (but that system reserved also shows golder empty despite using up space).

Lastly I do have some recovery disks BUT I suspect they are from my previous Acer (had a OOB failure so I returned it for an upgraded machine so I'm not sure how valid they are and the Windows 7 serial I have will most likely not match so I'm really hesitant to use them).

Thanks in advance...

 

[DMHolt57]

It does not appear that the recovery partition has been formatted, so no recovery was placed there. The system reserved is boot info from the OS install, you can't access it.

 

[diverdi]

Hi DMHolt57.
So you're saying I can't get anything off this drive?
What about off the old drive? Although I've just plugged it in and it appears exactly like the current drive in that no "file system" shows up (I assume that's what you are referring to when you say it doesn't appear to be formatted?)

 

[whs]

I would do this - gives you a much cleaner installation anyhow.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html

 

[diverdi]

Hi whs.
I'll give that a try... I'll have to wait until I can access enough bandwidth so I won't mark it as solved yet...

 

[whs]

You'll get a nice, clean system.

 

[mjf]

Check your Recovery Partition with Partition Wizard "Explore Partition". You'll probably find everything is there. The PW installed mini Tool is fine for this. I'm running an ACER OEM Windows 7 on one PC and didn't have a problem getting rid of the junk.
Imaging the recovery partition with Macrium works fine and you can restore to the existing drive or a new one. Then do a factory restore using the alt F10 key presses.

 

[theog]

Did you make your ACER Recovery disks?

 

[diverdi]

@ mjf - thank you, I'm going to check out that program NOW!
@ theog - as briefly mentioned in the OP, I made recovery disks BUT I'm not 100% sure they are from this Acer or from a previous one that had an issue soon after I got it and was returned for an upgraded machine - hence I'm not sure how valid they and so I'm hesitant to use them...

 

[diverdi]

Ok, I have downloaded and run partition wizard as per mjf's suggestion - it doesn't look like there's anything much in the recovery partition of the current HDD..
However in the original drive there is a bunch of stuff!
So I suppose the trick now is to ?? use PW to copy the stuff from the old to the new??

 

[mjf]

Ok, I have downloaded and run partition wizard as per mjf's suggestion - it doesn't look like there's anything much in the recovery partition of the current HDD..

Why do you say this? Have a look in "Sources" - this is where the core build files are placed. Also check out the overall size of the partition using PW it should be ~7GB.

 

[diverdi]

Ok, I have downloaded and run partition wizard as per mjf's suggestion - it doesn't look like there's anything much in the recovery partition of the current HDD..

Why do you say this? Have a look in "Sources" - this is where the core build files are placed. Also check out the overall size of the partition using PW it should be ~7GB.

The pic showing Sources is from the old HDD which was removed. The current, in-use HDD only has the napp7.log in it.. no "sources" folder.
That's why I say I figure I need to copy from the old HDD to the current HDD....

 

[mjf]

OK. I see.
Can you perform a Macrium image of the recovery partition from the old HDD? If so then I'd do that.

 

[Kaktussoft]

What is in the \D2D\images folder?

 

[diverdi]

Hi guys. @Kaktussoft - D2D should have been the factory restore info for my system. @ mjf - I used PW to copy the partition containing pqservice etc from the old drive to the current. (Got this to work). However when I tried to restore the computer to factory set-up if still give me the "can't find D2d image" error. So I gave up and did the 'fresh installation' route which whs proposed (by then my slow internet connection had finally completed the 3+Gigs of download). So I'm in the process of restoring my system now - the fact that I can send this shows head way is being made! Thanks to everyone who contributed - I'm going to mark this solved...