Full disk recovery does not work???

Well if you have a Windows installation disk you can try running a repair.

Yes, I tried that using a windows 8.1 installation disk, but I don't have the windows 10 disk. Interestingly if I choose to reset windows 10 using the windows 8.1 install, then it says that the drive is locked. I can install windows 8.1 fresh with no issues.

I'm confused, but it looks like Acronis does not work correctly with Windows 10 ie. it does not restore all of the partitions as they were during the backup. Something still is there. I'm pretty sure its not a hardware problem as windows 8.1 installs with no issues.

Anyway, I can't repair unfortunately either, so thought that I'd just go back to my Acronis backup and fix it ... how wrong I was. Now, no working system

See if this link helps?

http://www.kapilarya.com/fix-the-boot-configuration-data-file-is-missin…

This may help as well:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-update/the-d…

Thanks for the suggestions, but no luck unfortunately

I notice when I boot up and go to repair and run diskpart that the acronis restore has the SSD marked as GPT which doesn't look right somehow??

If you have a 64bit UEFI capable system then by default Win 10 will initialize your disk as GPT during the installation.

I would say that if you can overcome the locked drive issue then you might be able to use BCDEdit functions to restore boot. If not you will probably face a clean reinstall. The locked drive issue is cropping up on the net so google it, you might find a solution. If you do post it back here, just might help someone else.

Thanks again. I'm trying various options to try and avoid doing a fresh install again. I guess that I've got several options:

1. My Acronis backups are corrupt
2. My Acronis backups are ok, but they are being restored in a manner that prevents me using them
3. Both the Acronis backup and recovery are good, but the SSD / BIOS has some issues

I'm trying another restore right now onto the same SSD. If that fails, then I'll try restoring to another external disk and if that works, then the issue is with the SSD I guess. If that fails, then it looks like its the Acronis backup or recover, although the recovery always seems to succeed and I can see files in my backup???

I could do a clean windows 8.1 install which works, then upgrade to windows 10 in days, load drivers etc and then restore my files, but like I say, this is what Acronis is supposed to do really?

take a look here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyBrjDpsXGc

You can downloads Windows 10 installation media and create a bootable USB stick or DVD. You can then use the recover option when you boot the installation media.
You use the Windows 10 media creation tool to create the installation disk/usb stick

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/media-creation-tool-insta…

Ian

Latest is that I had to eventually perform a fresh install of Windows 10, then restore the c: drive and reconfigure the operating system.

Basically it looks like Acronis 2016 does NOT protect against corrupted MBR, so not impressed at all. If there's an issue with the MBR then its a fresh install and recover the contents.

Kenneth Simpson wrote:

Latest is that I had to eventually perform a fresh install of Windows 10, then restore the c: drive and reconfigure the operating system.

Basically it looks like Acronis 2016 does NOT protect against corrupted MBR, so not impressed at all. If there's an issue with the MBR then its a fresh install and recover the contents.

That's rather astonishing. Does that mean Acronis 2016 can't do a recovery to a brand new disk?

In my case, acronyms failed to recover to the same disk. I tried repeatedly and also checked by validating the backup. Basically it does not work.

I performed a full disk backup of all the partitions, C:, Mbr, efi, recovery partition and it worked fine. When I had an issue and windows 10 was unable to boot up and couldn't be repaired, then I tried to recover using acronyms backup and that failed. Only after I did a fresh install of windows 10 and re setup everything could I restore the C: basically the Mbr backup doesn't work.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has got this to work. Support were useless and said it was a windows problem and acronis had worked successfully despite my system not being usable. Pathetic.

When I do a full disk recovery I have to change the boot drive order in the BIOS (UEFI capable system) before I can use the computer.

Nik

Ken,

I have done several restores to 3 separate computer (2 desktop and one laptop) systems and all worked correctly.

The restores were the C drive (OS) partition and not a full disk restore although the C drive partition was the only partition I wanted to recover.
All restores were MBR and all 3 machines booted perfectly after the restore.

Some tests were done with a clean (new) drive, others were tested with drives containing older win8 or win 7 systems.
The only time I had trouble was on my first test restore. TIH2016 would not let me select the destination drive.

That drove us crazy for a while until one of the outstanding MVP here on the forum suggested that I may have created the backup image from an OS/Disk that was corrupted. Well, he was correct. The OS (Win8.1) did not show signs of corruption and there had been no alerts concerning drive status problems.

I did a command prompt as an admin with chkdsk c: /f and discovered that several things were wrong. Chkdsk fixed the problems and I created a new image. After that all my restore tests were successful. Several of the tests were restoring to disks larger and smaller than the original.

Obviously, that is not your problem but it was worth noting.

Oh, and I ALWAYS do a partition recovery from the TIH boot disc and not from within windows.

Be sure and post back your discoveries and solutions.

Steve

Kenneth Simpson wrote:

Just wondered if anyone else has had severe issues trying to recover a system from a complete disk and partition backup? Situation is that had a working windows 10 pro system, took a backup successfully, then a few hours later had an issue where windows 10 would not boot. Looked like the MBR was missing! Anyway, I knew I had a backup, so restored all the disks and partitions successfully from an acronis bootable image (MBR, C:, system restore etc) successfully, but still the system does not boot.

Getting nowhere with support who basically said it was a windows problem and acronis had worked! Even though the system was still unusable. Clearly they just read from scripts.

I would have thought that the point of taking a complete disk image and all its partitions was to be able to restore a system back exactly to where it was when the backup was taken. Clearly I was mistaken as its taken 4 hrs so far and still haven't got my data back yet!

Any help gratefully received

How do you know "the MBR was missing"? Any idea of what make your Windows 10 suddently stop booting?
Do you know whether you have a UEFI/GPT set up or a BIOS/MBR set up for the system disk?

Does ANYTHING in True Image 2017 work???  I have had ZERO luck backing up a simple file, then restoring it.  I also have yet to create a bootable rescue media (disk or USB drive).  Somehow I'm not trusting my "Archives" I created either!  Waste of money so far!   Good thing I didn't trust this software and made separate backups to my network!! Acronis Support has spent hours on my system with no change.

You may get better answer if you post in the ATIH 2017 forum rather than the ATIH 2016 forum.

I have recovered files with ATI 2017; mainly from the Cloud, but also from local backups.

It would help if you gave more details of the problem you are having. Without any more it is difficult for us to be of assistance.

Ian

Kenneth Simpson wrote:

In my case, acronyms failed to recover to the same disk. I tried repeatedly and also checked by validating the backup. Basically it does not work.

I performed a full disk backup of all the partitions, C:, Mbr, efi, recovery partition and it worked fine. When I had an issue and windows 10 was unable to boot up and couldn't be repaired, then I tried to recover using acronyms backup and that failed. Only after I did a fresh install of windows 10 and re setup everything could I restore the C: basically the Mbr backup doesn't work.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has got this to work. Support were useless and said it was a windows problem and acronis had worked successfully despite my system not being usable. Pathetic.

Ask, and ye shall receive. Sometimes, anyway.

I've run into similar (but not identical) issues with ATI 2016. Like you, I had backed up my system and hidden partitions to an external hard drive using disk/partition backups; a couple of days later, my system drive went sour. For the record, I'm running Windows 10 AV (ver. 1607) on a UEFI-capable machine, though the system drive is using BIOS/MBR partitions on a 1TB disk. Data is in a separate partition on the same disk, also backed up to the external HDD using file/folder backups.

The first issue I encountered was the ATI boot media's refusal to see the external HDD. It's a 4TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub. Acronis Support told me the boot media was missing necessary drivers, and that I needed to create and use a WinPE boot disk. This was at odds with several threads in this forum that suggested connecting the external drive to a USB 2.0 port even though the drive supports USB 3.0. Lo and behold, that worked. Which is very much at odds with the notion that the boot media needed drivers it didn't have. (And there you have more support for your thesis that the Acronis support people are just reading scripts. They are also apparently not paying much attention - if any - to Acronis' own discussion fora.)

The first issue resolved, I verified my partitions backup. That was successful. Then I found that the ATI boot disk wouldn't recognise the new drive. (It's kind of hard to restore to a disk the rescue media can't see.) More hours of research on this forum and elsewhere. Discovered a post in this forum that told me that I needed to use the Add New Disk tool in the boot media. This step does not appear in the ATI 2016 User Guide's instructions for restoring a hard drive to a new disk.

Having successfully persuaded the boot media to recognise both the backup drive and the replacement drive, I finally got to the restoration. As directed by the User Guide, I selected the system partition and the 2 hidden partitions for restoration and specified their locations on the replacement drive. Also as specified in the Guide, I did not select the MBR for restoration. The restoration was reportedly successful. But on attempting to boot from the replacement drive, I got a message (presumably from the BIOS) that said "An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that don't contain an operating system." The only connected drives at that point was the new drive and the optical drive, which was empty.

I'm now doing more research here and elsewhere to confirm (or negate) my next step, which is presumably to go back to the ATI boot disk and restore the MBR, notwithstanding the instruction in the User Guide. Your post above does not fill me with hope that I will finally be successful   :-(   However, any comments on the topic will be most welcome.

I'd also welcome any comments on whether Macrium Reflect's documentation and ease of use is any better than Acronis'.

On looking for comment on restoring the MBR & Track 0 after restoring the partitions in the same backup, I stumbled across a suggestion to check the System Reseerved partition to make sure it had an "Active" flag. That was the problem - the other hidden partition (the Recovery partition had been marked "Active" by the restore operation instead of the System Reserved partition. 

I corrected that problem; the system then booted from the new system disk without apparent problem. I didn't have to restore the MBR & Track 0. Why did the wrong partition get the "Active" flag? That remains a mystery.

All in all, that's too many things that went wrong. And far too much time spent searching for answers to the problems that came up. And an unnecesarily complex response from Acronis Support. I'll be looking for alternatives to the Acronis software.

Hello, my name is Patrick and in 2015 i bought the Alienware Alpa i7 (First Model R1) with a 2TB HDD and probably a year later I bought the Acorns True Image 2016 for one Computer. 

I was running legal Windows 10 license but I don't remember if the Alienware alpha came with Windows 8 and late I did a free Upgrade with Microsoft.

I did regular backups entire backups with a 2TB external Seagate hard drive and the last one I did was on the 12th of December. Normally I only kept one full PC recovery file because I had the Alienware HDD with only 300gb of free space.

2 days ago the last two programs that I installed was FileZilla and Geforce did a driver update for the Nvidia Card.

After this the computer did not want to boot Widows 10 anymore so I restarted the computer 3 times until I got the Blue Windows 10 recovery menu, and my first mistake I think was to try and run Alienware Respawn thinking that it was a recovery software on previous states but what it did was to reset the Alienware to the factory configuration where i was running on Windows 8 again and erased all my data, apps and everything previously installed.

So I panicked a little bit and installed Acorns True Image 2016 with my credentials and tried to recover the full pc with the External HD, thing that did not work. So I read and watch a few more tuts to see if it was possible to do anything else and suddenly I remembered that I did an Acornis True Image USB Bootable System.

So next thing to do was to restart the Computer with the Acorns USB  and the external HD plugin and boot from the USB.  I get the Acornis True Image Boot Menu and I follow the instructions for the Full PC Recovery, I wait and the computer restart and did not work.

What I am worried about now because all the partitions and recovery to factory status are gone and still I haven't Recover my PC or Windows 10.

I don't know much about Computer and I tried to be as careful as I could but probably I did something wrong and is there anything else I can do or that data is lost forever?

I would love to hear your comments on the matter.

PD: Also because I don't have a newer version of Acornis true Image than 2016 I can;t have access to the Acorns support =-(.

Best regards.

Patrick, welcome to these User Forums.

Sorry to read of your computer issues and loss of data etc.

You should be able to recover your Windows 10 OS and data etc but there is an important point that needs to be checked, which is how your Windows OS was booting, i.e. did it boot as a Legacy / MBR / BIOS system, or boot using UEFI / GPT?

This check is important because the Acronis Rescue media needs to be booted in the same mode to match the Windows OS mode.

If you are able to look at your backup .TIB file contents (via the Rescue media, or on another computer with ATI installed), then if your is a UEFI system, you should see a EFI partition included in the backup.

I am assuming here that your regular full backups were for Disk(s) and Partitions, and included all the partitions on your original 2TB internal HDD drive.

The steps needed at this point are to boot the computer using the Rescue Media on USB or CD/DVD, then follow the steps shown in the attached PDF document.  The document was written for ATI 2017 but the steps will be the same for your 2016 software.

Hello Steve. 

Thx for the quick reply.

I don't Understand very much about the Legacy / MBR / Bios System, but after a couple of restarts the machine did recover and load windows 10 on the point that was saved in the external HD, the ones that I saved on Dec 2017.

I am afraid though to shutdown the computer and that it won't start again.

Should I do something else or just upgrade to Acorns 2018 and make a new recovery USB Boot and Entire PC Copy on the external HD?

Cheers

Patrick, if you computer has recovered and booted into Windows 10, then there is little advantage at this point to upgrading to ATI 2018, as I doubt it will add anything to this current situation.

Your USB Rescue Media should still be OK unless you made it a very long time ago and have updated ATI 2016 since then, but again, if it is working, then leave it alone unless you have a spare USB stick to make another copy of the Rescue Media on.

Making a new full backup (Entire PC) to your external HDD now that the computer is working with Windows 10 again is probably a good idea, but would suggest keeping your Dec 2017 backup image too if you have enough free space on the backup drive to hold both that and a new backup.

After that, then I would suggest doing a normal Windows Restart to confirm that all is now OK.  I know that this may seem a little daunting but probably best to do this sooner than to leave it and worry about what might happen.

I would expect that your computer should be able to restart ok but you won't know for sure until you try this.

Thx Steve again for the reply and the advice.

I'll do the backup and re update the USB because it been a while since I did it as you said there is been some updates with Acorns True Image 2016.

After all that I will restar normally the computer and keep a closer eye on how it progress and I ll update to you in this forum.

Have a great happy 2018.

Chrs.

Hy Steve,

Justo to update mi comment with the bad news that the day that I was able to recover my PC I was installing a game before start to make a new recovery and the computer suddenly crashed and I wasn't able to recover anything else.

 So i took the PC to Dell tech support centre where they told me that probably is the HD that is having some issues and that they going to make diagnose and tell me what's need to be done.

If they are capable of restoring a new fresh copy of Windows 10 I'll try to install again Acorns True Image 2016 and maybe this time tried to recover file by file separately and not the whole PC.

I'll keep an update as soon as I have more info.

Cheers

Patrick, sorry to hear about the failing HDD - hope that Dell can sort it for you.

If you do a file by file recovery, please do not attempt to recover any Windows OS or Program folders / files, this should only be used to recover your user data such as documents, pictures etc.

I'm sorry, but I'm late here but I experienced the SAME EXACT problem on a W10 x64 Pro V.1709 system my wife uses.

Last Friday she went to turn it on and got a Blue Screen saying it couldn't boot (didn't get the error message) and it would retry. Retry brought up the StartUp repair which couldn't fix anything and then the Diagnose and finally the Options page with restart or advanced options.

Tried the restart a few time, same results.

Confused I remembered I had the ORIGINAL W7 system on the original hard disk (I migrated her C: to an SSD and kept that partition). That disk when I used the F12 (this is a Dell XPS8500) menu to select it booted fine? So it wasn't the h/w.

Not a problem, Acronis made a backup the day before.

Went to my DVD I created and restored the ENTIRE SSD. MBR and all.

Booting worked when completed. However power off the PC and right back to the repair, diagnose cycle.

So I figured it was time to search the web to manually rebuild the MBR and BOOT files. Got to a CMD prompt and started issuing BOOTREC and BCD commands. BOOTREC /FIXBOOT came back with Access Denied. Searched the web, tried all suggestions, none worked?

OK, I had a bright idea, I'll use the Media Creation tool, install W10 Pro. It booted fine, even after a few power downs and once waiting overnight. Well the next step was to restore ONLY the C: with Acronis. Restored, powered down, would not boot, same cycle as before? OK, maybe her backup was bad. She had 8 so I used the OLDEST and restored it, SAME problem???? What is going on? BTW, that PC was set to Legacy even though it can do UEFI and the BIOS never changed.

I really suspect at this time a Windows problem as a friend came to me with the exact same problem on his computer 3 days before. I messed with it and couldn't make it boot. The only thing left (he had NO backup but IS buying Acronis now) was to re-install W10 which I was reluctant to do. He didn't want to do that either and decided to take it to a computer store. $150 later he let me know they couldn't do anything but re-install W10 as well. They put back all the MS programs and connected the data. Luckily not many non-MS programs were used. Had to re-install things like A/V, Printer, and some small utility programs.

Still, it was beyond me why Aconis couldn't fix the PC with a restore?

I should say at that point I thought possible the SSD had died? It is over 5 years old I think, so I bought a new one and installed it. I then put a clean W10 on it and it booted fine. Tried a restore, same problem as before?

So, for the last few days I've been rebuilding her PC on a clean install of W10, and since the Acronis backup was on the drive when I did the install the last time WINDOWS.OLD folder has a lot of 'stuff' I needed in her old USER account there.

I wish I knew what the real problem is though? Might be W10, might not be. Wonder if the MELTDOWN & SPECTRE fixes are involved?

Irv...sorry for the slow response, but I have been dealing with a similar problem.

Next time, it is important that you get the BSOD error.  A couple of weeks ago, I got a BSOD after a windows update:

I did a restore, it would boot, windows would do an update, then I would get the same BSOD.  To resolve this problem, I restored a backup from a month ago.  The next update was the Fall Creators.  Then, up until yesterday, all was good.  Yesterday, I got another BSOD.  This time the error message was different:

So, I did a google search on Driver Power State Failure.  This particular is usually caused by a faulty video driver.  So, I did a restore from a week ago and I just updated my NVIDIA video driver.   I will see if that fixed it.

My conclusion is that this is a windows update issue...not ATI.  I'll check back later and see how things go.

Regards,

FtrPilot

Our error was only the Inaccessible Boot Device. The last Windows Update was 3 or 4 days before, and the PC is shutdown every time we are done using it, never left on overnight.

Each boot was fresh.

A friend just called, he had a monitor problem. It worked but once the PC went to sleep his monitor would not turn back on. He took it to a computer shop and they told him that a recent Win10 update replaced video driver and 'older cards' stopped working on it. I don't think this is so, but...I searched and found this, https://www.drivethelife.com/windows-10/fix-display-video-graphics-problems-after-windows-10-update.html but it doesn't sound like his problem?

Since my wife's PC was updated clean to Ver 1709 it has not failed to boot.

The normal boot process I remember (I worked on a PC OS as a programmer) was the BIOS loaded a specific location on the disk (MBR) into RAM and executed that. That was the OS Bootstrap that loaded the actual OS. From the days of DOS I don't think any OS has had a different method. So this error message we were getting (unless W10 put up the wrong message) indicated to me the MBR was possibly corrupted or what it was loading was. Sort of leaning more towards 'what it was loading' though I could be wrong. I even tried restoring a 2 month old backup with the same fail results. So that led me to think MBR problem. I could NOT restore that with BOOTREC commands, BCD commands, not EasyBCD....

However a clean W10 install NEVER failed. So I assumed with ATI just restoring the C: alone would work, but it only worked if I used the DVD and let it reboot after the restore (which I assume bypassed the MBR?).

Sort of makes me believe either the backup of the MBR was faulty or the restore, and ATI must restore the MBR no matter what you specify. Of course I can't prove this.

In any case, I'm too far gone with the New W10 install and migrating everything over that was needed. Too many changes now to be able to go back about 9 days and try and figure out what data is needed now.

I wish you luck though, hope it is a simple device driver fix for you. If it was a Windows update, I'd stop the automatic updates until you know Windows has admitted to this and states there is a replacement KB fix for it.

For all I know the Meltdown & Spectre update which did cause AMD boot problems could be the root of our problem and even your's?

Check https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4073757/protect-your-windows-devices-against-spectre-meltdown and https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4056892/windows-10-update-kb4056892 see if the one above was installed once you do get it up. That was the one that caused 'damage'....

Irv,  thanks for the info.  Updating the NVidia driver did not work.  At the next shut down, I got the same BSOD (second one).  I have restored a 2 month old .tib and plan to go through the fall creators update again.  I have also downloaded the windows 10 install iso, so I can see if a repair install will work.  Will report back.

Hope all is well and you are back on-line.

I've just about done re-doing my wife's PC after the clean install of W10. Between the WINDOWS.OLD folder and getting files off of old TIB's, it is done until my wife finds out something is missing that I can restore. Mostly games and really the progress in them. Also a data file here and there probably too.

Now I have a bigger conundrum? Should I test the BACKUP restore. Sort of worried and I know/thought I had a good backup before but couldn't restore the system to be bootable? What if I do a restore and windup the same way, a non-bootable system?

What precautions should I take? Do a BCD restore. Get EasyBCD and save stuff away?

Is it possible this is a problem on a W10 x64 Ver. 1709? Thinking back I probably should have tested that before I invested all the time into rebuilding her C: drive?

Irv...I'm back. After restoring the 2 month old image, I updated the NVIDIA driver.  When I launched the NVIDIA app, I got a windows error message Unable to find GL file name.  Unfortunately, I did not take a screen grab of the error message.  the NVIDIA update went OK, even with the error message.  This time, I also reinstalled the Intel video driver.  

Next day, windows performed an update, but it was not the Fall Creators update.  I believe it was the Meltdown update.  A day later, Windows did the Fall Creators update.  So far, no problems.

Regarding a practice restore...do you have the hard drive that you replaced when you installed the SSD?  You could restore to that HDD and see if it boots.  I do that every so often.

No, the SDD replaced a smaller SSD that I thought failed. What I had was a W7 on the original hard drive that the system came with when I cloned the OS to the old SSD originally. That W7 was able to be booted when W10 couldn't.

I outsmarted myself by thinking since it booted to W7 why not just restore the W10 image to the W7 partition. Didn't work. When I tried to boot it I got a message that the wrong OS was there. I don't recall when I did though after that? I either gave up and just started to work on the W10 on the new SSD or tried an MBR install to the Hard drive and it failed with the repair, diagnostic cycle.

So I'm sort of stuck in the middle now, not sure if I need to do a full restore to the SSD if it will work?

I'm thinking of trying something, the new SSD came with a license for ATI 2017. It is a PNY SSD, and I'm to go to HERE and D/L it. I think it is a FULL version, not crippled for PNY in some way? If ATI 2016 has a defect causing the problem, maybe ATI 2017 wouldn't? That page has a link to 2018 I could buy as well.

Since it now appears I was the only one that couldn't recover a full SSD, it is possible all my images were bad (but I had recovered the drive in the past?) and I was unaware of it? It appears I'm between a rock and a hard place? If I do a test restore and it works, I'm home free. Doesn't work and I'm into many hours of work recovering again?

I guess I could try the old SSD, put that back in, install W10 to it, make sure it boots, and then try to recover an image from the new SSD, but again, if it fails I'm wouldn't know what to do? If it works, great. I'm NOT sure I want to take a chance and do that? I've got some ideas like basically looking at the MBR in both drives, but I'm not in the mood to start doing that, could be a waste of time. I might if I'm bored, I think that PC still has a SATA port to add a drive and that would make it easier to do though...

Oh, it turns out my wife's PC has an ATI Radeon 7500, mine has the Nvidia, GT635. I've had no problems?

Well it looks like the problem could be W10 Ver. 1709 install media?

See this LINK, and on it:

============

This only happens with Windows 10 1709 install media.

I tried the same command  with Windows 10 1703 install media and do not get the error "Access is denied".

============

Of course I was using V1709 media....

I wish I knew that... However, whatever the problem is, it really doesn't explain why ATI 2016 couldn't restore the boot drive? Explains why I couldn't fix it though? Wondering is Access Denied was not the case on the file before V1709? ATI wasn't expecting it and couldn't handle the full restore?

"On looking for comment on restoring the MBR & Track 0 after restoring the partitions in the same backup, I stumbled across a suggestion to check the System Reseerved partition to make sure it had an "Active" flag."

Rob,

Thanks for you post.  I had the exact same problem when restoring a Windows 10 Pro MBR image to my Sony Vaio VGN-FZ140E laptop using Acronis True Image 2018.  I tried to set the "C:" partition to active using EaseUS Partition Master but it kept giving me an error.  I also didn't know if the C: drive was supposed to be marked active or the small 450MB "system" partition.  I also booted windows 10 Install DVD and tried to repair windows using bootrec /fixMBR, etc but that failed too.  Then I booted and old BartPE disk running XP and use Dispart and the following commands to mark the C: drive active and that solved my problem.  Obviously, I could have done that from the recovery console CMD shell from the windows install DVD.  Problem was that ATI marked the normally hidden 450MB system partition active instead of the "C:" drive.

diskpart
list disk

Type select disk 0, (replace 0 with your computer’s primary disk)
Type list partition
Type select partition 1, replace 1 with the partition’s letter that you want to set as active
Type active

Type exit
restart your computer

This still doesn't work in the 2019 version, fortunately I had a foresight to create a Windows image file and that worked.

This still doesn't work in the 2019 version, fortunately I had a foresight to create a Windows image file and that worked.