Backup and Restore Windows 10 Pro

Anonymous

I have had 4 laptops with Windows 10 for many years and 3 USB hard drives, which I connect to any laptop when needed, that I have used for backups and I use windows 7 image backups. I have restored the image files many, many times from all my laptops with no problems until now. All my laptops have the latest Windows updates. I recently had a problem with one of my laptops where I had to reformat and reinstall windows without activating it because the activation info was in my backup, and I tried to restore my latest backup but Windows could not find or recognize the USB drives as backup locations. File Explorer could read the hard drives with no problem and I could locate the backup I wanted to use. I contacted Windows chat support, went to the second level of support with no luck and they scheduled a call to me with third level support. The call never came.. Anyway, I attributed the failure of not being able to restore the image to the fact that I had never backed up anything with the new installation of Windows to those USB drives.

Now, out of curiosity's sake I decided to try the Restore operation in one of my other laptops, and connected one of the USB drives to it. Surprise, surprise, it didn't find a backup file either, so my problem with my previous laptop had nothing to do with what I thought, it is a Windows 10 problem caused by some update, because, as I said I have restored many many times from those USB drives with no problems, starting with when I had Windows 7 installed in them.

Another curious part is that when Windows can't find an image to restore it prompts you look in a network. Windows allows you to assign a network location to the drive or file that you want to restore, but when Windows goes to this location it, again, says there is no file that can be used.

Does anybody have any thoughts on this problem or it too new?

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Anonymous

2021-08-23T23:27:55+00:00

Hi,

Exhausted or not... I just tried an experiment.. I couldn't resist..

I changed the permissions of my COPY image to see what would happen..

I changed Owner from System to Administrators with Full Permissions to all files\folders..

The image appeared..

I then deleted System as a User.. The Image worked..

I then deleted ALL USERS except for Administrators... The image worked.. BUT... When opening the Security tab I now get the "You don't currently have permission ... click continue to permanently gain permissions" every time I access Security.. It does not retain the permission like before.. But it works..

If anyone wants to experiment, you might try making Administrators the Owner with Full Permissions and delete all other users..

I also tried using "Backup Operators" as Owner and only User.. The image was not recognized..

BTW... The copy is now appearing without the USB HDD containing the original connected.. Another surprise..
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Anonymous

2021-08-23T23:46:08+00:00

Good going. I don't see a need to delete all of them in the copy. I'll delete "Creator Owner" because I had added it. I'll change the Owner to "Administrators (PCRsComputer\Administrators)" & see what happens. Mine already has Full control in the window. I'll want it to show up first of all. Next, I'll run through the restore screens to see whether things still look funny. IIRC, back in that old thread, the partition letters/descriptors offered for restore were missing or different in some way from what they looked in the screens for an original.

Edit: So, here is what the copy looks like now...

Edit: Nope, I still get "Windows cannot find a system image on this computer" (or so). I clicked Retry twice with the same result.
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