Trying to restore from saved system image

[Lizzy123]

Hi all

So I booted into my other hard drives win 7 pro installation. Then I saved that system image onto my hard drive where the new windows 7 pro install is. After booting into the new windows install, then rebooting and going through the wizard and using the backed up image from the old windows 7 pro install it appears as if nothing is installed, no programs, drivers, themes, visuals etc. It's as if I didn't do anything at all.

What gives?
thnx!!!

 

[Brink]

Hello Lizzy,

Is where you saved that system image the original location that you created the system image backup to, and not just copied there?

Did you get any error or failure messages during the system image recovery?

Did it restore the system image to the correct HDD(s)/partition(s) drive letter(s)?

If you are dual booting, did it restore to the other installation instead?


http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/675-system-image-recovery.html

 

[Lizzy123]

Hi Brink sorry for bumping this old thread,

But...here's what I've tried.

1) Save image using back up and restore, saving the image on the same HD (my back up)
2) Boot onto the primary drive and go into back up and restore then reboot
3) Select the newest image saved on F (that's my back up hard drive)
4) Proceed to next (format option is greyed out)
5) Let it do it's thing and reboot
6) Complete, or so it says. Windows reboots and declares that back up and restore succeeded, despite the fact nothing actually took place and my system is as it was before I tried to restore the image.

Both drives are NTFS

Now I'm thinking, is the issue the fact I'm trying to restore the image from another hard drive, or would it be an issue restoring an image saved on the same hard drive? Or, maybe there is something wierd going on with the partitions.

Please advise,

Thanks!

 

[Brink]

Lizzy,

First, you really should have the system image backup saved to a HDD other than the HDD that you are wanting to restore it on, or unplug the old Windows 7 drive before doing the image recovery.

 

[mjf]

Agreed that you should store images on another HDD. Most would use an external USB HDD.

If I understand your situation...
You can reimage your existing system reserved/ C: (OS partition) from an image on another partition. Everything you describe is consistent with a successful Windows reimage. I think Windows has given you what you asked for.

You can double check by attaching the image vhd using Disk Management and have a browse. Is it different to the recovered system?

 

[Lizzy123]

Hi Brink,

Just tried this again but this time I saved the image to the target HDD, unplugged the backup HDD and also burnt the optional restore disk. However, during mid restore I get the following message :

The system image restore failed:

Error details: Windows did not find any disk which it can use for recreating volumes present in backup. Offline disks, cluster shared disks or disks explicitly excluded by user will not be used by Windows. Ensure that disks are online and no disks are excluded by mistake. (0x80042414)

Just another quick question, should I format the target HDD before I attempt to re-image, maybe that's the problem, or...

The target HDD was a bit suspect, I was forced to use my backup HDD due to random lockups and Kernal-power BSODS. I ran diagnostics, SMART, etc and they all came out fine though so I concluded that windows 7 got corrupted somehow. Not sure though I don't think things work like this. (well back in the windows 98 days they sure did!)

Hope I'm not too dumb!
Thanks again

 

[Brink]

Lizzy,

I'm sorry to hear that you are having so much trouble with this. You might give the Macrium Reflect Free program a try to see if it may work better for you on creating and restoring system images.

 

[Lizzy123]

Thanks to all for all the help - in the end I bought a copy of Acronis True Image and it seems much more promising. It's a shame M$ just can't get their utilities right.

 

[Brink]

I'm not sure why the Windows system image feature doesn't work for you since I do not have any issues with it myself, but I'm happy to hear that Acronis works for you without issue.

 

[mjf]

I've used Windows imaging extensively on Sandy Bridge and non Sandy Bridge processor machines and luckily never had a problem that couldn't be easily resolved.
As Brink pointed out free Macrium Reflect is an alternative. I think it is an excellent product. Also, if you use either Seagate or WD (ie. the majority of HDDs) you can get free versions of Acronis to suite.