System Image Recovery - Can't find System Image

Anonymous

I am trying to restore a backup system image to my repaired PC. It is wiped clean. I have the "Repair Disc Windows 7 64 Bit" that I created in Windows 7. Using Windows 7 Backup I have a system image backup on an external WD Essentiasl 1TB USB Hard Drive.

I insert the Repair Disc and start the system. Get to System Recoevery Options. I have the external Hard Disk with the system backup image connected. Select System Image Recovery option. Says "Windows cannot find a system image on this computer. Attach the backup hard disk or insert the final DVD from a bckup set and click retry. Alternatively, close this dialog for more options. Retry gives me the same message. Tried starting with drive attached, not attached, same result. Click cancel.

Next option selected is "Select a system image." No system image listed. Hit refresh, still nothing. Top of screen says "Click Advanced to add a network location or install a driver for a backup device if it does not show up in the list below." I click on the Advanced tab. Option to "Search for a system image on the network" or "Install a driver." I select install a driver. Find the right driver for the WD Essential hard drive (disk.sys and partmgr.sys) and when I click on them I get "The specified location does not contain information about your hardware." Click OK. Can't find how to load these drivers I am being asked for.

Funny thing is that on the screen where I search for driver I can see the WD Essential Hard Drive connected to the system. I can also see the system image files but when I click on them I get the same error message, "The specified location does not contain information about your hardware."

Please HELP. This is very frustrating!!!

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Anonymous

While in Repair Mode, you have an option to open a Command Prompt. From there try the following commands:

Mountvol

(This command will show you all available drives, including your external disk)

dir Q:

(Replace Q: with one drive letter at a time from the letters that the mountvol command showed you, e.g.

dir D:

dir E:

etc.

until you see a folder "WindowsImageBackup" on the screen. Let's assume it is F:\WindowsImageBackup.

dir F:\WindowsImageBackup /s

(This command should show you the contents of the image folder, with files totalling more than 10 GBytes)

Now perhaps this image folder is missing, incomplete or inaccessible.

I have to add that I am disappointed with the native imaging facility under Windows 7. It is temperamental and its functionality is extremely limited. I recently bought myself a copy of Acronis TrueImage 10 and its is to the Windows imaging tool like a fully functional motor cycle is to a child's tricycle. Other brand imaging tools are just as functional - just make sure that they are certified for Windows 7.

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95 additional answers

Anonymous

2016-06-16T06:06:50+00:00
Still in 2016 the same problem occurs. I created an image of Windows 7 32b before upgrading to Windows 10. Windows 10 came up with no problems however I found that I needed to restore the image of the previous uncleaned up Windows 7 to recover some email data (Windows 7 was cleaned up of Malware etc before upgrading to W10)

Before recovering W7 I first created an image of Windows 10, created a repair disk and backed up all data with Windows Backup.

It was then that I tried to restore Windows 7. First I deleted all of the Windows 10 partitions then inserted the Windows 7 repair disk. After initiating the step to find previous images the result was,NONE could be found.

I checked the following:
1. That the WindowsImageBackup folder was in the backup drive root directory.
2. All image folders were named correctly
3. I actually went back and installed a fresh copy of Windows 7, created an image of it and then created a repair disk. All to test the new repair disk with the newly created image. The new image could not be found by the repair disk software!!!!
4. Used the Windows 10 repair disk and it was able to locate all the stored images, but refused to restore the Windows 7 image ( being the wrong OS.)
I subsequently restored Windows 10 from it's repair disk without a problem.

The conclusion must be that the software on the Windows 7 repair disk is unable to recognize any correct images in the correct place. I have been gutted by this and will never ever use Windows 7 Image recovery again it just is too flaky, maybe I will still use Windows Backup. Use Acronis or equivalent every time to get reliable image and data recovery.
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Anonymous

2016-06-16T06:34:14+00:00

I found that I needed to restore the image of the previous uncleaned up Windows 7 to recover some email data.

Restoring an image in order to recover some E-Mail data is an overkill. It is sufficient to mount the image file as a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk), then copy the missing data to some other drive.
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Anonymous

2016-06-16T11:05:44+00:00

Thanks Frederick,

A useful input. Have not come across the VHD method before . I will find out how to do this.

Nevertheless The issue of not being able to restore Windows 7 images remains. You can see the effort and checking that was done in an effort to make image recovery possible ( OK for Windows 10 but not for Windows 7)

Thanks for the input.
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Anonymous

2016-06-17T00:20:02+00:00

Davmax1589 - The media you had your Win7 image saved on, did you also have Win10 images saved there? You can only have one version image in the location. If you have multiple images saved with both win7 & win10, copy the win7 image to a different location/media keeping the same path. The Win7 repair disk should then find the win7 image. Discovering this solved all my issues with Win7 backup and restores.
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