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Newbie - Restoring from a vhdx image

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Hello,

My Windows (2012 r2) Server boots, but freezes before the OS loads. Unfortunately, I do not have an Acronis Image for this server, but I do have Windows Server .vhdx image (created using the Windows Server built-in backup application). 

I have tried several times to restore using this image and the "windows restore media installation CD" . Windows restore can never see the file and has very few options. I would like to know if I can use a Acronis USB Rescue Media and the Windows .vhdx image to restore my system? My questions are: 1. Will the Acronis Rescue Media be able to use the vhdx to restore? 2. Will I have to add drivers to the Rescue media in order for the Acronis Rescue Media to see my hard drives attached to my Dell Perc Raid Controller?  3. The entire system is NTFS and I own copies of Acronis Backup and Recovery 10 for Server, Disk Director as well as Acronis 2016 for workstation. My fear is that my disks will not be available after I start the rescue media so could someone help me with the steps of loading specialized drivers to my Acronis Rescue media? Is there anything else to consider? I am a newbie, and have only restored the simpliest of home systems. Thanks for your help!

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Hi chip, unfortunately not.  Acronis supports .vhd files (Win 7 / server 2003), but not .vhdx (Win 8.1 and newer / Server 2008 and newer).

You might be in luck if you mount your .vhdx file as a volume and then image it with Acronis and attempt to restore that again though. 

As for specialized drivers for your media, the default Linux media is not want you want.  Instead, you want to build WinPE media.  

1) Download the Windows 10 ADK and install it first - you can use Windows 10 ADK just fine in Win 7/8/8.1 and 10 (I believe the corresponding server versions as well, but have not tried).

2) Once installed on the system, just run the Acronis media builder but select the WinPE option and it will create the WinPE for you.  I suggest creating directly to a USB flash drive for ease of use - especially for the next part

3) To inject drivers into the WinPE once it's been created, you will need to use ADK DISM commands and have the .inf files you need readily available.  If you are using a Dell or HP server there are WinPE driver packs with storage controllers and Nic's already available (Dell WinPE 6.0 driver pack for Win 10 ADK) (HP WinPE driver packs)

In a nutshell, modify this code to point to the boot.wim file from your UsB drive you just created and folder called mount somewhere on your drive - root of your drive is ideal, but make sure to give all users full access first and wherever you extract the necessary 64-bit drivers for your specific machine (if you use the Dell or HP WinPE driver pack, it includes both 32-bit and 64-bit drivers so copy those out or specifically use the 64-bit path and not the entire thing you're you'll get errors. 

dism /Mount-Wim /WimFile:C:\Temp\boot.wim /Index:1 /MountDir:C:\mount
dism /Add-Driver /Image:C:\mount /Driver:C:\Drivers /Recurse /ForceUnsigned
dism /Get-Drivers /Image:C:\mount
dism /Unmount-Wim /MountDir:C:\mount /Commit