A Cautionary Tale Recovering a Windows UEFI Environment (0xc0000225 Boot Error)
When I started using Acronis True Image back in 2005, I set up separate partition backups: system disk, data disk, and an archive disk. At the time, this gave me flexibility in backup frequency (I was using DVDs as storage at the time) and the ability to recover at the partition level. Over the years, I successfully used True Image for file, partition and 'bare metal' recovery. Through multiple True Image upgrades and switching to external backup drives, I continued to follow the same backup procedure. With Windows 8.1/10 UEFI, I expanded the system backup to include all the recovery and EFI partitions. Unfortunately, the new laptop made it difficult to swap harddrives, so I crossed my fingers and skipped doing a full restore test.
Recently one of my laptops suffered a complete harddrive failure. Using the last backup, I restored the partitions in the correct order to a replacement drive but the drive was unbootable (error 0xc0000225). As always, these kinds of issues occur at the worst possible time, so I decided to recover the partition layout by cloning the harddrive of my other (identical laptop) to the replacement harddrive using an external enclosure. To speed up the process, I used the Windows version of True Image 2017 which rebooted the second laptop and completed the cloning operation. For reasons that are not clear, the cloning operation left my second laptop unbootable with the same 0xc0000225 error.
Initial attempts to recover with Windows 10 installation media were not successful. Acronis Technical Support walked me through the steps of running bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /fixboot, and bootrec /rebuildbcd - my second laptop was now bootable again. Installing the cloned drive in the first laptop confirmed that the cloning operation was successful. I restored the individual system/data/archive partitions from the most recent backup and got the first laptop working again.
I have since switched to disk level backups and have confirmed that I can do 'bare metal' as well as partition/file restores. If I ever need to clone a drive, I will take a few extra minutes and use Acronis bootable media. The morale of the story - just because the old way always worked, keep up with developments and test your backups!


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