Difficulty restoring an image

Just speculation, but the likely cause of the problem is the temporary Linux installation that is used when doing the recovery not having the drivers necessary to identify the NVMe drive. 

Not sure why the rescue media is not booting. If it is the Linux version that would explain the problem. The Windows RE recovery media should include all the necessary drivers.

The encryption could be an issue, but not sure why that would prevent recovery media from loading.

Is the new installation of Windows 7 also encrypted? The backup of the old installation would be of the unencrypted installation as the system was running windows when it was made (I am assuming that you created the backup from within windows).

Ian

Woods, welcome to these public User Forums.

I have a Dell Precision 7510, running Windows 7 Pro 64bit that came with an NVMe SSD drive and Dell's drive encryption. This 256GB drive is now full and I am attempting to migrate this to a new NVMe Samsung 960 EVO. I am also using Acronis True Image 2019.

First point here, from your description above, you already have a working Windows 7 system with the necessary drivers to support your existing NVMe SSD drive, so the main obstacle you are facing is the Dell drive encryption, rather that NVMe drivers for Windows 7.

ATI 2019 can make a full disk backup of your current Windows 7 SSD drive provided you do this using the ATI application running from Windows 7.  The backup image file that ATI creates will not be encrypted and you would need to re-enable encryption after restoring that backup to the new drive.  This assumes that ATI recognises the drive as not being encrypted when running from Windows due to the encryption being unlocked after booting to the desktop.

The next obstacle is to create the Acronis Rescue Media and to get this to recognise the new Samsung NVMe SSD drive.  You should not be trying to do this from the Windows ATI application because this will require a restart but will use a Linux OS environment for the offline Acronis application, which doesn't have support for NVMe drives.

Working from the original SSD version of Windows 7, you need to use the Acronis Rescue Media Builder tool to attempt to create the Rescue Media using files from the Windows Recovery Environment for WinPE media.  You should create this on a small USB stick (2GB to 32GB max formatted as FAT32).

You will need to test the rescue media by booting it and seeing if you can see the NVMe SSD, even if this is the encrypted drive and the file system is 'not recognised' due to encryption.  This is to test that the media has the necessary NVMe drivers.

If the simple Acronis Rescue Media does not recognise your NVMe drive, then you will need to use the MVP Custom ATIPE Builder tool (link below) and use the option to inject device drivers from your Windows OS system.  Note: if the Windows RE files cannot be used, then you would need to install the Windows ADK to be able to create WinPE Rescue Media.

Once you can get the Rescue Media to boot and see the NVMe drive, then you can install the new Samsung SSD and try restoring your backup of the original SSD to the new drive.

One final note:  While using the original SSD run the Windows msinfo32 command and check what the BIOS mode is shown as for Windows 7.  This should show as either UEFI or Legacy but may not with Windows 7, in which case, open Windows Disk Management and check whether your SSD shows as MBR or GPT.  GPT = UEFI.  This is important, as you need to boot the Rescue Media in the same mode as used by Windows when restoring a backup.

IanL-S wrote:

Is the new installation of Windows 7 also encrypted? The backup of the old installation would be of the unencrypted installation as the system was running windows when it was made (I am assuming that you created the backup from within windows).

The "New" install of Windows 7 (SP1) is NOT encrypted.  It is a fresh install with only ATI2019 installed.  

Steve,  Thanks for the welcome.

I think I had come to the conclusion already that my encryption was half the issue, NVMe being the other.

So I was able to "Clone" the old Win7SP1 partitions that contain the UEFI "stuff" on it to the new NVMe drive.

I made a full backup of the old Win7 install from within Windows and copied that backup to an external hard drive.

Additionally, I made the USB Rescue Media Builder.  Then swapped the drives.  When I boot the machine with the USB it does enter ATI2019 but for some reason it dose NOT see my external hard drive with the backup.tib file on it.

Clearly the backup is too large to be on a FAT32 formatted partition.  Do you know while file formats TI2019 will read from?  The external hard drive is NTFS.

Thanks for all your help.

Woods Pepperman wrote:

Clearly the backup is too large to be on a FAT32 formatted partition.  Do you know while file formats TI2019 will read from?  The external hard drive is NTFS.

The hidden system partitions should be FAT32. Acronis 2019 can read and write to a wide range of file systems (see knowledge base). Not sure if this is what you were wanting to know.

Ian

IanL-S wrote:

Woods Pepperman wrote:

Clearly the backup is too large to be on a FAT32 formatted partition.  Do you know while file formats TI2019 will read from?  The external hard drive is NTFS.

The hidden system partitions should be FAT32. Acronis 2019 can read and write to a wide range of file systems (see knowledge base). Not sure if this is what you were wanting to know.

Ian

Ian,

That is exactly what I was looking for......NTFS is right at the top so not sure whats going on.  I am going mess with it a bit more this evening and post any updates.

Thanks

So I am back to where I was the other day.

I can insert and boot into Acronis with the Rescue Media USB that I created, however my external drive or any thumb drives I have with my file to "restore" do not show up.  I have clicked "refresh" and even plugged the drive into every USB slot I have open and it still fails to find the drive.  This prevents me from completing the restore.

I am following this Forum Article now:

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-true-image-2017-forum/external-…

Well, i tried to help myself and follow the steps in the last Forum Article.  I was not seeing any of the same screens when I downloaded and installed the Windows ADK.  I am on Win7 and TI2019.....That forum poster was on Win8.1 and TI2017

I can make the Boot USB with the Windows PE, but it still doesn't work.  I tried to find drivers for my USB hard drive and USB flash drives to "add" in the advanced Boot USB creation wizzard, but could not find anything that was not an .exe.  (It is looking for a .inf)

I guess the thing that is the most frustrating is that I have a USB drive large enough to put my backup file on.  When I boot using the USB I still cannot see the other USB with my backup file.  (I can't put it on the same partition as the boot USB because it is formatted as FAT32 and exceeds the file size allowed.

If I take that SAME USB drive, and make it the boot device, I can still boot into Acronis.  So it doesn't seem like a driver issue.  I do get a drive letter that pops up E: is shows zero kb and if I click on it "Drive Needs to be formatted before use".   If I click OK, I get an error about not being able to format that drive.

I just don't understand why both of my USB sticks boot fine when the TI2019 software is on them, but DO NOT show up when formatted as NTFS or ExFAT and have my backup.tib on them

As much as I have enjoyed learning over the past two weeks trying to get this to work.....I have classes starting tomorrow and I need to get this figured out.

Woods,

Can you post the brand and capacity of your external drive that contains your backup image file?

Can you tell us if this external drive is self powered or does it rely on the USB port for power?

Can you confirm that your Dell is a laptop?

If you are using an external drive that is powered by a USB port connection that may be your issue as most USB ports on laptops lack sufficient power to run mechanical drives.

If you can lay hands on a flash drive of large enough capacity to hold the image file you might try using it instead of what you tried thus far.

Most laptop power settings also disable USB ports rather quickly after machine start and the ports not being used so this may in play here as well.

Have a look at the link below, it may be of benefit in regards to checking if all USB ports are enabled correctly.

LINK

Enchantech wrote:

Woods,

Can you post the brand and capacity of your external drive that contains your backup image file?

Can you tell us if this external drive is self powered or does it rely on the USB port for power?

Can you confirm that your Dell is a laptop?

Thanks for the reply,

 

I have tried the following removable media types:

Toshiba Canvio USB 3.0 Drive, Self Powered, 500GB

PQI Portable H568V, USB 3.0 Drive, Self Powered, 1TB

Sandisk Cruizer Glide, USB 3.0 Flash Drive, Self Powered, 64GB

Sandisk Ultra Fit, USB 3.0 Flash Drive, Self Powered, 128GB

 

Laptop is a Dell Precision 7510, It came from Dell running Windows 7 SP1 on a 256GB NVMe PC300 SK Hynix SSD.

I am trying to restore to the same Dell Precision 7510 with Windows 7SP1 on a Samsung 960EVO, 1TB

 

Thanks for the help!

Enchantech wrote:

Have a look at the link below, it may be of benefit in regards to checking if all USB ports are enabled correctly.

LINK

 

All 4 of my USB ports on the Dell Precision 7510 are the USB Powershare Battery Icon type.  Figure 2 from the link you send.

 

Thanks

Woods, thank you for the answers to the various questions being asked in this thread.

From what I can see so far, the key issue here is that your ATI WinPE Rescue media does not have support for your USB 3.x controller / adapter where you are connecting your external drive, so you would need to add drivers to provide that support.

If you have any USB 2.x ports on your Dell computer, you could test the above by connecting your USB 3.0 drive to a USB 2 port, but please be aware that the power requirements of USB 3 devices is greater than that for USB 2 devices by a factor of around 50% more, so if you have an externally powered USB 3 drive or a powered USB 3 hub that would help.

Note: The MVP Custom ATIPE Builder script can capture and inject device drivers from your Dell computer when creating the WinPE Rescue Media.

Steve Smith wrote:

Woods, thank you for the answers to the various questions being asked in this thread.

From what I can see so far, the key issue here is that your ATI WinPE Rescue media does not have support for your USB 3.x controller / adapter where you are connecting your external drive, so you would need to add drivers to provide that support.

If you have any USB 2.x ports on your Dell computer, you could test the above by connecting your USB 3.0 drive to a USB 2 port, but please be aware that the power requirements of USB 3 devices is greater than that for USB 2 devices by a factor of around 50% more, so if you have an externally powered USB 3 drive or a powered USB 3 hub that would help.

Note: The MVP Custom ATIPE Builder script can capture and inject device drivers from your Dell computer when creating the WinPE Rescue Media.

 

Steve,

Thanks for the input.  The problem I have with all of this is, when I use either of the two flash drives as the "Rescue Media", they come up fine and have no problem at all.  Its only when I try to use them as backup.tib file "holder" that they don't show up.

I tried to build the WinPE media, both on the computer I am trying to move data from AND another one running Windows 7, but I am at a loss for what drivers to "add."  Since both of those Flash drives show up fine when used as the Rescue Media, I feel like its not a driver or hardware issue. (Clearly you know more about this than me)

Hopefully you saw a previous post, I get an "E:" drive that shows up, but it says "I need to format it before I can use it".  It also will not let me format it while in the Rescue Media booted window.  If I remove the flash drive while in the Rescue Media screen and click the "Refresh Disks", that "E:" drive stays there and doesn't go away.

This computer does not have any USB 2.0 slots.  I may have a USB 3.0 powered hub I can try.....somewhere.

Thanks for the continued support.

Would it be easier to try to find drivers for a Network card or the SD Card reader that are also built into this laptop?

Possibly building them into the WinPE Rescue Media?

Can I grab them from the Windows Driver folder?  If I grad a bunch of drivers, is ATI2019 smart enough to use the ones it needs?

Thanks

The problem I have with all of this is, when I use either of the two flash drives as the "Rescue Media", they come up fine and have no problem at all.  Its only when I try to use them as backup.tib file "holder" that they don't show up.

The Rescue Media has to be FAT32 in order to be bootable, but this has limitations, i.e. for USB sticks, it cannot be more than 32GB in size (Microsoft limitation) and file sizes cannot be more than 4GB (FAT32), so if you want to combine having both the Rescue Media and your backup .tib files on the same physical device, you will need to either use the new option in ATI 2019 to create an external USB drive as a 'Survival Kit' drive, or else manually create the same type of drive.

For the Survival Kit, this is offered when making a new backup to a suitable removable drive, where ATI will carve out a 2GB FAT32 partition at the start of the drive, and leave the remainder of the drive as NTFS to store images etc.  The FAT32 partition will become the Rescue Media which can be booted from, and the second NTFS partition used for backup or recovery.

See KB 61639: Acronis True Image 2019: How to create Acronis Survival Kit and KB 61738: Acronis True Image 2019: Survival Kit disk partition for backups is limited to 2TB on BIOS-booted systems

To do the same manually, you would need to use a Partition Manager program such as the free MiniTool Partition Wizard, to resize the main NTFS partition on your external drive to clear 2GB of space at the beginning of the drive, then format this as FAT32 and allocate a Windows drive letter to the 2GB partition.  Once you have the 2GB FAT32 drive shown in Explorer, use either the main Acronis Rescue Media Builder or the MVP Custom builder to create the Rescue Media using the drive letter of the 2GB partition.  This is the method I have used personally on several different drives.

I tried that last night, I took the 128GB Sandisk Ultrafit and created the 32GB FAT32 partition, then formatted the remaining capacity as NTFS and loaded my backup.tib file.

Stuck it in and fired up the laptop........Failed to recognise boot disk, press any key to retry.

WELL: I did have an idea while I was out running errands.  Similar to that operation I performed last night...and you suggested now.

Since I was going from a 256GB NVMe to a 1TB NVMe, I DO have the space to create an additional partition on the new NVMe drive that could hold the backup.tib.  Boot in with the restore media and use that file to "rebuild" the C: drive.  Then use MiniTools to delete the "Backup" partition and then expand C: into the new unallocated free space.

I will give this a try and report back.  Thanks for all the input so far, I truly appreciate it.

Woods, you only need a maximum 2GB FAT32 partition for the Rescue Media - using 32GB is wasteful and not necessary.  You also cannot use a large USB stick for the Survival Kit, it has to be recognised as an external, removable disk drive (HDD or SSD), so your Sandisk Ultrafit stick is not going to work here!

Well, I got it to "Restore" but it won't boot. Constant "Blue Screen of Death" before Windows even gets loaded.

I think I am gonna start from scratch and start over with this entire process.

I am formatting my 500GB Toshiba Hard Drive now.  I am going to make a fresh backup of the original drive.  Also, going to make a fresh Rescue Media USB.

I have no idea why this is being such a PITA.

I am very quickly reaching the point where I could have just reinstalled Windows from scratch and reinstalled all my programs separately and have spent less time on this.

I can't tell if this is a problem with Acronis, but it is really pissing me off.

So I went back to the starting board...Square one, fresh install of ATI2019 on my OLD hard drive installed in the laptop Windows7 SP1

I did a fresh backup, a made a fresh Rescue Media USB, I selected the Advanced/Custom options, selected WinPE, even added the Intel NVMe Drivers.  

I go for the boot, I get into the Rescue Media, I can see my back up.  I select my backup.tib and complete the restore.

Now when the compute boots up, I get a Blue Screen of Death BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO

Technical information: STOP 0X00000074

Anyone have any ideas??

The error you posted can be attributed to a number of issues both hardware and software related.  Hardware issues could be bad disk drive, ram module(s), motherboard.

Software issues could be a virus, or more likely filesystem corruption or, Windows registry corruption

You can boot the WinPE you created, close or minimize the Acronis window to reveal the underlying command prompt, and run chkdsk c:/r at the prompt.  If any errors are found and fixed you might be good to go.  If no errors are found you might have Windows registry corruption.  For that you can try the procedure below.

• From the WinPE Command Prompt;
• Type: CD C:\Windows\System32\config > hit Enter;
• Type the below commands one by one and hit Enter to rename these files with .old extensions:

    ren C:\Windows\System32\config\DEFAULT DEFAULT.old
    ren C:\Windows\System32\config\SAM SAM.old
    ren C:\Windows\System32\config\SECURITY SECURITY.old
    ren C:\Windows\System32\config\SOFTWARE SOFTWARE.old
    ren C:\Windows\System32\config\SYSTEM SYSTEM.old

• Type the following commands one by one and hit Enter to copy registry backup files to your current registry folder. And this will help to manually restore your Windows registry:

    copy C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack\DEFAULT C:\Windows\System32\config\
    copy C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack\SAM C:\Windows\System32\config\
    copy C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack\SECURITY C:\Windows\System32\config\
    copy C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack\SYSTEM C:\Windows\System32\config\
    copy C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack\SOFTWARE C:\Windows\System32\config\

When completed shutdown your computer by typing the following at the command prompt

Wpeutil Shutdown

After shutdown remove the WinPE media and restart the machine.  Hopefully it will boot to Windows for you.

Thanks, I will give that suggestion a try.

Just to clarify, I am able to boot into WinPE fine AND restore from my backup file.  I select "Shut down when complete." and allow the computer to shut down.

Once I remove all external storage and USB, I get that error on "First boot" after restore.

Thanks.

In the first post of this topic, Dell encryption was mentioned as being involved. 

Quick question: how & where is this enabled? 

If this is enabled in the UEFI BIOS settings, then you may need to turn it off before doing the restore or try turning it off now then see if the boot into Windows gets any further?

Going back to basics, if the above doesn't help.  When you made the backup of the original SSD, did you select to do a full disk & partitions backup, where all partitions are included, i.e. select the top disk option which automatically selects all partitions whether shown or not?

Similarly, when doing the restore, did you select to restore at a disk level by selecting the top disk entry again, where you leave ATI to assign all partition sizes and location automatically?

Steve Smith wrote:

In the first post of this topic, Dell encryption was mentioned as being involved. 

Quick question: how & where is this enabled? 

If this is enabled in the UEFI BIOS settings, then you may need to turn it off before doing the restore or try turning it off now then see if the boot into Windows gets any further?

****It came installed on the hard drive New from Dell.  There are NO Secure Boot Features enabled in the BIOS.  The Dell Security software is "disabled" during the original backup image creation process******

Going back to basics, if the above doesn't help.  When you made the backup of the original SSD, did you select to do a full disk & partitions backup, where all partitions are included, i.e. select the top disk option which automatically selects all partitions whether shown or not?

*****As I am sure you are aware, Dell ships computers with a few partitions.  My computer has 4 partitions, UEFI, Restore, System Reserved, and the OS partition.  Since the first 3 are not encrypted, I was able to use the "Clone Disk" tool to create the same partitions as the original.  From there, I used the Rescue USB to start ATI and then use my backup.tib to recover JUST the OS partion.  I let the Clone Disk operation resize the OS partition to fill the rest of the space.

Thanks for the help!

My computer has 4 partitions, UEFI, Restore, System Reserved, and the OS partition.  Since the first 3 are not encrypted, I was able to use the "Clone Disk" tool to create the same partitions as the original.  From there, I used the Rescue USB to start ATI and then use my backup.tib to recover JUST the OS partion.  I let the Clone Disk operation resize the OS partition to fill the rest of the space.

Woods, sorry but the process that you have used is not the recommended method here.

Provided you create a full Disk & all Partitions backup image from within Windows, when there is no encryption, then this will capture a complete image of your source drive without the need to do as you have tried here.  Restoring that full disk image should then result in a bootable computer using the new SSD drive you are wanting to migrate to.

Steve:

I went back and attempted your recommendation. I booted to the WinPE USB and did the full disk image restore. I selected the "Shut down after completion option."

When I restarted it, I got the Windows 7 splash screen and then a “BSoD”  The error was

***STOP: 0x0000007E (0Xfffffffc0000005, 0xfffff88004e966e2, oxfffff880035a11a8, 0xfffff880035a0a10

On restart from here, the computer went into “Start Recovery”

The results where:

System volume on disk is corrupt:

Repair taken: ckdisk

Completed Successfully.

Another reboot, another BSoD

Another “Start Recovery”

Registry is corrumpt

Repair Action: Registry Rollback

Result: Complteted Successfully

Another Reboot, another BSoD

Another “Start Recovery”

Recent Driver Installation or upgrade may be preventing the system from starting.

Repair Result: Error = 0x490

From there, it keeps getting BSoD and the Start Recovery does not do anything different.

I also attempted Enchantech’s suggested fix.

After reboot, I received a BSoD

And after re-trying the Windows Starup repair, I got the same…

Recent Driver Installation or upgrade may be preventing the system from starting.

Repair Result: Error = 0x490

Pretty much the same "stopping point"

Thanks for all the help coming my way!

Your error code shows your startup files are corrupted.  You can try a repair by following the steps in the tutorial HERE

I am trying to walk through those steps, but I don't have a OS listed in the System Recovery Options window.  No matter what drive I plug into this computer to load the drivers, nothing comes up that I can access.

What would you recommend to get the drivers loaded so the repair tool can see this NVMe drive?

Thanks

Woods Pepperman wrote:

I am trying to walk through those steps, but I don't have a OS listed in the System Recovery Options window.  No matter what drive I plug into this computer to load the drivers, nothing comes up that I can access.

What would you recommend to get the drivers loaded so the repair tool can see this NVMe drive?

Essentially this is the same issue that I had with the ATI2019 disk.... I needed to load the drivers. With TI, I was able to build the WinPE boot up option. When I load Windows with the Windows CD, I have no way to load the drivers. The CD does not recognize any removable media or external hard drives

 

Thanks

The USB drive and the main NVMe drive both show up in the BIOS, Its just when I get into the System Restore that I can't access them to 1, Repair the Windows install....or 2, load the drivers for the NVMe driver off the USB drive.

Woods,

When you load (boot) the Windows CD you should see the install screen (first one shown in the link I posted), you are saying you do not see that screen?  If you do can you follow the steps in the link?  If you can, how far do you get before you cannot go any farther and, what message or error do you see on screen at that point?

Frankly, performing the steps outlined in the link you should not see any request for drivers nor should you at any point be looking for or seeing any drives, NVMe drives or otherwise.

Woods, which particular Windows CD / DVD are you trying to boot from here?  If this is still sticking with Windows 7, then I would suggest trying a Windows 10 Install DVD or USB stick, and running the repair from that media.

You can download the Windows 10 install media via the Microsoft Windows 10 Download page and use the Media Creation Tool to create either a DVD or USB stick.

Note: If you can get your Windows 7 OS up & running, I would recommend upgrading to Windows 10.  If you do this from the Windows desktop, the upgrade can still be done via the Windows 10 upgrade program despite this having been officially closed back in 2016.  I upgraded a friend's Windows 7 system last month and it was activated straight away on Windows 10!  This only works for upgrades from a running Windows 7 OS, not for a clean install.

Enchantech,

I am booting off of a Windows 7 OEM disk.  I get passed the first screen (the first one in the link provided)

I click on the "Repair Windows" link at the bottom and I get the screenshot I attached named "Recovery" (The second one in the link....With no Windows image)

You will notice that the Startup Recovery does not "see" any installed images of Windows7

Clicking past that window and exploring the computer, you will notice that the Windows& CD does not see ANY drives attached to the computer other than the X: drive. (See imaged labeled "disks")

Steve Smith wrote:

Woods, which particular Windows CD / DVD are you trying to boot from here?  If this is still sticking with Windows 7, then I would suggest trying a Windows 10 Install DVD or USB stick, and running the repair from that media.

 

Steve I really truly appreciate your help, are yopu suggesting that a Windows 10 disk could repair the startup of my Windows 7 install?

Woods Pepperman wrote:

Enchantech,

I am booting off of a Windows 7 OEM disk.  I get passed the first screen (the first one in the link provided)

I click on the "Repair Windows" link at the bottom and I get the screenshot I attached below (The second one in the link....With no Windows image)

You will notice that the Startup Recovery does not "see" any installed images of Windows7

Clicking past that window and exploring the computer, you will notice that the Windows& CD does not see ANY drives attached to the computer other than the X: drive. (See bottom imaged attached)

 

***edit, I guess the forum renames files while you upload .JPG's?

Steve I really truly appreciate your help, are yopu suggesting that a Windows 10 disk could repair the startup of my Windows 7 install?

I would suggest that it is worth trying here, especially as the Win10 media should have support for your NVMe drives that your Win 7 OEM disc seems to lack.  If you cannot see the NVMe drives then it stands to reason that you will also not find any System Restore information stored on those missing drives.

Here's write up on how to add NVMe drivers to Windows 7 installation media. http://www.beezmo.com/geezblog/?p=1060

Woods,

As Mustang suggests you will need to create Win 7 install media and add the NVMe drivers during that process.   

What you have run into is a limitation of Win 7 with NVMe drives.  Win 7 does not have native support for NVMe therefore, those drivers must be added to the install media so that the repair tool can access the drive and find the boot files.

Win10 media had the same outcome.  It was not able to repair my Windows start up issue AND it did not see my NVMe Drive.

I did walk through ALL the steps here: http://www.beezmo.com/geezblog/?p=1060 and created a Win7 ISO with NVMe support.  Sadly, I had the same issue.  It never found any other drives beside the X: drive.

The ISO was over 7GB and I flashed it to a USB drive with the Windows USB Boot media creator.

I am past the point where Acronis is not worth the money....quickly approaching the point where I could have reinstalled everything from scratch in less time.

I thank everyone for their time.  I am going to put in a ticket with Acronis and give them about one shot to fix this before I ask for my money back and reinstall everything from scratch.

Here's what I would try in your case.

1.  Put the original NVMe drive back into the computer.

2. Download and install the latest Windows 10 ADK and the WinPE add-on package from Microsoft's web page here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/get-started/adk-install It should be backwards compatible to work in Windows 7.

3. Create TI 2019 Recovery media using the Media Builder "Advanced" option. Then select the WinPE option. You will not need to add the NVMe drivers because the Windows 10 WinPE already has these drivers included.

4. Boot the TI 2019 Recovery media. Make sure you boot the media in the same mode (Legacy or UEFI) as your Windows 7 disk boots from. This is important so TI keeps you new disk formatted the same way as your original disk was formatted. You should see your NVMe drive as an available source. Take a full disk backup. This will give you all the hidden partitions on the disk. When you create the backup, click the Options button and click the Advanced tab. Check the "Back up sector-by-sector" box. Also check the "Back up unallocated space" box. This will give you the best chance of overcoming the Dell encryption problem.

5. Shut down the computer and replace the original NVMe drive with the new larger drive.

6. Boot the TI 2019 Recovery media. Restore the backup taken in step 4 to the new disk.

7. Hopefully, Windows 7 will boot from the new disk.

8. After you get Windows 7 working on the new disk, you will need to use a partition manager program to move all the partitions after the OS partition to the end of the drive. Then you can resize the OS partition to fill all the available space on the disk. MiniTool Partition Wizard Free is a good choice.  https://www.minitool.com/partition-manager/

You should be done.

Woods, one last question here:  How exactly are you booting the Windows 10 or 7 (with NVMe) media?  NVMe requires UEFI boot as far as I understand, so the media needs to be booted in UEFI mode.  If your BIOS supports it, can you set it to boot UEFI Only and try again?  You are still going to need to do this to do a clean install of Windows on your NVMe drive.

Steve Smith wrote:

Woods, one last question here:  How exactly are you booting the Windows 10 or 7 (with NVMe) media?  NVMe requires UEFI boot as far as I understand, so the media needs to be booted in UEFI mode.  If your BIOS supports it, can you set it to boot UEFI Only and try again?  You are still going to need to do this to do a clean install of Windows on your NVMe drive.

 

Steve,

Since this laptop came from Dell with Win7 and an NVMe drive, it has a UEFI partition.  In the BIOS, it boots to this partition, then right on into Windows with no intervention from the user. (See the attached image for the boot sequence screen shot, this shot has the OLD drive that I am trying to replace.)

When I boot to the Windows 7 Disk from the CD drive, it by passes the UEFI partition and that is why I cannot see the drive to "Repair Windows".  (I only get the X: boot drive that the WIN7 disk creates)

Early on I tried to do a "Fresh Install" of Windows and install ATI 2019 and run a "Restore from within Windows 7"  That also failed, I am sure because of the lack of UEFI support.  Surely when the computer rebooted, it was not able to mount the NVMe drive to completed the restore.

I think I have 2 problems:

#1 revolves around the inability to boot to a Win7 CD with UEFI support to "Repair" the image that ATI drops on the drive.  (Because it just gives me a BSoD after ATI completes the restore)

#2 ATI2019 does not give me a useable image when it runs.

If I can cure problem #1, I can probably fix the botched job that ATI2019 does on my Windows restore.

Woods,

Given the screenshot you posted I think that when you boot the Win 7 disc you are doing so as a Legacy device not a UEFI device.  Can you describe this boot process for us to help us understand more?

Have you clicked on the View button shown in your screenshot?  If yes what do you see?  Can you post a screenshot of it?

I think that the View button should allow you to see and select boot devices installed in your machine.  I suspect that when the UEFI option is selected clicking View will display any boot devices capable of booting in UEFI mode.  If Legacy then Legacy boot devices will be shown.  The screen text sounds like you can select by check mark boot devices that should appear in the Boot Sequence box field and be selectable from there to boot a specific device.

Obviously your bios sees your NVMe drive as it is selected as your current boot device in your screenshot.  Given that, any removable media you boot in the same UEFI mode should have no problem seeing the NVMe drive.

Enchantech wrote:

Woods,

Given the screenshot you posted I think that when you boot the Win 7 disc you are doing so as a Legacy device not a UEFI device.  Can you describe this boot process for us to help us understand more?

Have you clicked on the View button shown in your screenshot?  If yes what do you see?  Can you post a screenshot of it?

I think that the View button should allow you to see and select boot devices installed in your machine.  I suspect that when the UEFI option is selected clicking View will display anu boot devices capable of booting in UEFI mode.  If Legacy then Legacy boot devices will be shown.  The screen text sounds like you can select by check mark boot devices that should appear in the Boot Sequence box field and be selectable from there to boot a specific device.

Obviously your bios sees your NVMe drive as it is selected as your current boot device in your screenshot.  Given that, any removable media you boot in the same UEFI mode should have no problem seeing the NVMe drive.

 

When I have been booting to the WIN7 CD, I have used an external Pioneer BRD-XS06 BLU-Ray drive with an Windows & OEM disk.  I have also tried with the disk I created with one of the suggestions earlier with the NVMe drivers.

Attached is a screen grab of the "View" button selected.  Not sure what it does, but I don't think it performed how you expected.

Thanks for the update.

Not quite what I suspected however, the information displayed is helpful.  I can tell that your NVMe drive is formatted GPT (required for UEFI boot) which is encouraging, and I can see that the boot file (EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi) looks to be correct (also encouraging).

Can you post a screenshot of what the Add Boot Option button displays?  Also looking to the left side of your first screenshot can you click on the Secure Boot option to expand it and tell us if it is enabled?

When you click the Add Boot Option button I am thinking you will have boot option choices.  If I am correct then you should be able to add for example something like this:

UEFI: Pioneer BDR-X506......

Your WinPE USB when attached should also list as a UEFI: devicename boot device.  In order for you to boot the machine in UEFI mode you would select the UEFI boot device by adding it to the boot device list and selecting it so that it appears in the Boot Sequence field which I believe indicates which boot device is selected.  Doing this should allow you to see the NVMe drive from the Win 7 install CD so that you can run the repair.

Secure Boot may need to be disabled temporarily for you to be able to boot to a removable media device.

Here are the screen shots that you requested.

Currently the USB DVD is NOT connected.  SO if you are looking for that, its not gonna be there.  I will connect it and re-screen shot.

Reboot, WITH USB drive attached does show UEFI USB Drive....as attached

Ok, if you uncheck the NVMe drive and only leave the Pioneer drive checked, save and exit the bios and allow the computer to reboot it should boot the CD in the Pioneer drive in UEFI mode.  This in turn should allow the Win 7 repair to find the Win 7 installation on the NVMe drive and you can then attempt the repair discussed previously.

OK, SO I went in and UNCHECKED the NVMe SSD and "exit and save"

The computer reboots, I get the ole "Press and Key to boot from CD"...I press a key.... It tries to "Repair Start Up" and gives me the error I screen shot....."Bad Driver"

The computer reboots again, and then back to "No NVMe Drive"