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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Anonymous

2010-12-29T02:25:37+00:00

Hi Pegasus, Thanks for the reply but I know that's not the case in this instance. The IO-DATA external HDD is less than 2 months old. It's been re-formatted as NTFS. I can use it on this machine and 3 other machines with no problems. I can access it from the command prompt in repair mode on this PC.
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Anonymous

2010-12-31T05:49:46+00:00
Hi Pegasus,

Previously I had just separately selected the options to create a backup image and a recovery disk as a single clean state backup is all I wanted. The system created the backup image and the recovery disk fine but then claimed it couldn't see any backup images in the advanced recovery section.

This seems to have been solved by setting up a backup schedule. This time I went through the backup wizard to create the system image I deselected all of the folders so it was just including the system image. I had to let it create the image again (4th time in total). After creating the image through the wizard the image was available in the recovery options.

I would say this is a bug.

If anyone at MS is reading this, before seeing this problem the system was:
- Clean (at least as delivered by Dell :D ) Japanese Windows 7 x64 Home Premium.
- Upgraded to Japanese Windows 7 x64 Ultimate through anytime upgrade.
- English MUI Language pack applied and default language set to English.
- All available Windows 7 updates had been applied.
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Anonymous

2011-07-10T22:58:11+00:00

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!!!

I'm having the same problem. However, I can see the correct Windows Image Backup for this computer from the command promt, but when I select a system image backup from the System Recovery Options menu, I'm shown Windows Image backups from other computers which have stored their backups to the same external hard drive. The image for the computer I'm trying to restore appears in the drive directory (as seen from the command prompt), but not in the system image recovery page. I select the option, "Select a system image" and click "Next." I'm then shown the available images on the drive, but the one I need for this computer is not displayed. How can I point the recovery to the image I need?
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