Unable to boot windows 8 after disk restore TI2016
Hi,
I would appreciate some guidance trying to restore a Windows 8 backup.
The need to restore was caused by my Samsung Series 9 Notebook suddenly refusing to boot with the message, “All boot options are tried, F4 for recovery options”.
F2 takes me into the BIOS, F4 does nothing.
I have been traditionally using TI2013 to perform disk image backups, and this is the first time I have tried a full image restore. I have a 256 GB SSD drive formatted as GPT that I installed myself three years ago, as a replacement to the supplied 128GB SSD drive.
My TI2013 recovery USB turned out to be a trial version, evidently created by me prior to buying the full version, so yesterday I bought TI2016 and generated a new recovery USB. So far so good.
The first thing I tried was a full disk restore, which went through fine, but upon rebooting (after setting Fast Boot and Secure Boot in the BIOS back to enabled) I am getting the same boot failure message.
Unfortunately I never looked at the partition order before I did the disk restore on the 256GB drive, assuming that TI would take care of that...
Having searched the forums, it seems that the partition order is crucial, so I swapped in the original SSD drive that came with the machine, (which boots up fine) and took note of its partition order.
This was different to how TI had restored my 256GB drive. With the order of the 128MB partition different. The first attached image is the working 128MB SSD partition, the second is the 256GB partition.
Next, having reinserted my 256GB drive back into my notebook I tried adding a new drive from the TI utitlities and recreated the partitions manually, then restoring one partition at a time in the correct sequence, assuming the 128MB partition is the MBR?.
Still no joy. It looks like TI inserts a 128MB partition at the beginning of the drive regardless of what i choose. The main difference between the two SSD drives appears to be that 128MB partition at the beginning of the 256GB drive which is not present on the working drive. Is this the MBR? and if so why is TI placing it as the first partition when the working drive seems to have it as the third partition? Or is that a red herring?
I would appreciate any suggestions as to what to try next. All the data is intact, and It is so frustrating having spent hours on this already not being able to make any headway.
Thanks - E
I think Steve nailed it with:
One of the key factors here is that you have a UEFI / GPT system and you must boot the Acronis bootable recovery media (DVD or USB stick) in the same mode as your Windows boots, so as UEFI. This means that you should select the UEFI option for booting the recovery media and not the Legacy option if presented. You should also turn off Secure Boot to allow the recovery media to boot as I am sure you are aware already.
The bootable media is 32/64 bit capable as well as legacy and UEFI boot capable. If you restore a UEFI image while booted to the media in legacy mode, it will try to convert the partitions and disk as a legacy/MBR install and fail to boot. If the system was installed in UEFI mode and the disk previously converted to GPT (as mentioned in the original post), use the system onetime boot or boot override menu and make sure you're booting the recovery media in UEFI mode first (you'll see a black background with white letters with Acronis boot options... legacy mode is more colorful with graphics).
As long as you're booting the reocvery media in the correct way and took a full disk image (all partitions), you should be able to restore and boot just fine.
Thanks to you both,
I have been booting in legacy mode, so I will try booting in UEFI mode to see if that helps. Thanks for the detailed guides. I will try to follow the exact steps in the next day or so.
Cheers - E
Creating and Booting the USB in UEFI mode, and preparing the drive for the partition restore worked like a charm.
And after a few tantrums, Windows 8 booted up from the drive finally.
Thanks to you both. It has been a frustrating few days, but satisfying to get it working.
At one stage the local Samsung Service center insisted my SSD was shot, despite evidence to the contrary.
Eduardo
Awesome, glad it all worked out.
Having dual bios (UEFI and Legacy) has definitely brought some learning curves with it because of all of the different settings by default on various boards.
Keep it mind if/when you ever re-install the OS using your Windows media too. If you boot it in Legacy - you get a legacy MBR install which probably isn't preferred if you have a UEFI system with a GPT formatted disk. Also, Windows won't let you install a Legacy install on a GPT formatted disk either and people often get hung up when that happens after they accidentally boot legacy mode on their Windows installer and can't move forward.