Made recovery disk from trial copy and now rather screwed
I built a new Win 7 machine when my old MB died. I did an install and bought a copy of TI. I downloaded the trial file while waiting for my disk/serial number. I created a recovery disk. Recently that system failed to boot. My last backup is older that I really want to restore. I tried the recovery disk to backup the current disk contents but got to the end and it announced that this was a trial version and I was SOL. I have my wife's machine that I rebuilt and upgraded to Win 7. I bought another copy of TI. I made changes to both machines to remove a file reported as a virus. When I rebooted my main machine it would not reboot. As best as I can determine, the reason for not booting is the absence of the directory "BOOT" in the root directory for the install. I am seriously afraid to reboot this machine. So I can't just make another recovery disk. And I am not sure how much machine specific information is used to build that recovery disk.
My backup for my main machine is older than I want to restore. I ran my recovery disk and got to the end and it announced that it would do nothing because this was a trial copy. No provision for entering a serial #. Just screwed.
Is there anyway to create a usable recovery disk without rebooting my second machine. As it sits I can't backup or restore. Nothing I have done with TI is usable because it never occurred to me that the recovery disk would not work.
I did make a CD from the first machine. But I did it apparently before I registered the installed copy while waiting for the TI disk to be shipped. It never occurred to me that I would have to make another one after registration.
The BCD file is not confused - it is gone. That is my basic problem.
When a rescue CD is made, does it include the various drivers that were installed on the machine creating it?
If I can recover the Boot directory from my backup, my thinking is that if I copy that on to the boot drive I will resolve my problem.
Harold, you may want to try EasyBcd http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 to recover your BCD file.
I tried to go that way. When I previously ran the Acronis recovery that did not work, it altered some things on my hard disks. Now the boot locations have been altered and there has been a copy of Acronis recovery loaded into the hard disk at an unknown, and unwanted, location. I don't know what has been done. Nor do I know how to make sure my newly downloaded ISO of Acronis (which I understand to be fully enabled) replaces whatever is in there now.
Additional question - what is the significance of the yellow and green colored stars that appear on partitions on the backup list? I have looked at help and found nothing.
Also my partitions are now renamed. There is the hidden/reserved partition in the RAID0 array used, I believe, for boot information. The actual RAID drive is now shown as F: and two other drives in the system have become C and D. Suggestions about resolving the labeling?
The borking of my machine continues. I can no longer boot to my hard disk. Every boot results in Acronis asking me to press F11. If I do, I get back to something that does not appear to be willing to do what I need. I suspect this is at least partially caused by the fact that my current drive letters do not resemble those (the correct ones) when I did my last backup.
If I don't select F11, I get NTldr not found and it quits.
Aargh Harold, you didn't mention in your first post this was a RAID system.
It might just be that your RAID system needs to be rebuilt assuming your new install of W7 has the drivers. if it is a software RAID.
In your post above, I'm assuming you are referring to what you see when using the Rescue CD.
As the CD uses Linux your drives labels will not appear as they do in Windows, one reason why it is often recommended to give partitions meaningful names as these don't change when viewed under Linux.
You cannot and should not relable them whilst under Linux.
There is a nother problem that you are about to come up against, if the new MB is not the exact same model and make as the previous one, Windows 7 is going to sulk and there is not much you can do but to re-install Windows (ask me how I know :( ). Unless you purchased the PlusPack or have used Microsoft deployment tools that will bypass the HAL catalogue, W7 will require a complete re-install.
Sorry. I have threads going on a number of sites seeking a solution and I am having a bit of a problem keeping straight what I have or have not said on each one. A summary follows.
I am not changing motherboards. This system failed on reboot. Apparent cause was removing a program called BCU. My guess is that an uninstaller tool I used (revo) erroneously associated BCU with BCD when it went after things. Just a guess.
The boot drive is RAID 0 controlled by the Intel motherboard chipset. The BIOS still knows it is a RAID array. I can use tools like UBCD4Win to access, read, write the contents of the disk. Everything appears to be there except for the directory named Boot that should appear in the root of the C drive.
Booting to that drive results in a BSOD that says it can't find anything to boot. In the process of using various approaches of standalone boot CDs, I generally get visibility of the 100GB reserved partition that Win built when it made the RAID array. I see the drive, formerly known as C, as drive F, but there is no "BOOT" folder in it.
Getting into Acronis; I have a backup of the C drive on a USB drive. But I believe Acronis gets confused by something. I can't see a BOOT folder on the backup either. It may be a hidden file. I always set my machine to display all file types. Anyway, I can't find anything to restore. Attempts with EasyBCD have not yielded much of anything. The last iteration of booting from the Win 7 distribution disk seemed to have done something. But now whenever I boot I get the Acronis F11 message. If I do not choose to press F11, the boot fails with no NTLDR found. I am in worse shape than I was before.
Basically my tools keep getting me in deeper without fixing the problem.
OK, if the computer is giving you the F11 message when booting from the internal drives, this means that somehow you have either activated the Acronis start Up and Recovery Manager (ASRM) or have at some time activated and/or installed a Secure Zone (SZ).
Do you have a full version of Disk Director 11 to hand? Not the trial as that won't allow you to make any alterations over 8MB. What it will do though is tell you if it can find partitions that can be recovered - so the Boot/system partition might be recoverable, just that you won't be able to recover the partition with the trial version.
I'll think on.....
It would have been an innocent activation of ASRM. I was working thinking it would not alter the computer disks. I have tried documentation (I know, a last desperate idea) but close to 300 pages and finding just what you need - . I do not have disk director.
I am also trying disparately, and not real effectively, to remember how to use CP/M er DOS.
I just had a thought (and a nice IPA to stimulate thinking). After getting the Acronis ISO from their web site, I was able to back up my C drive. The visible piece of the RAID array.
What if I destroyed the RAID array? Made the drives regular old drives and restored the C I just backed up. At the very least, it would get rid of the issues about some things seeing the RAID and others not. This is, of course, a one time choice. One way or another I can't get back where I am.
Right now if I use Win 7 install to got to repair and then cmd prompt, I see three partitions. With all other disk drives removed except the two comprising the RAID array.
C is a reserved space - that is probably the 100 GB set aside by the system when the RAID array was built. But it gets a letter.
D appears to be pretty much what should be on my real C.
E is a partition with a bunch of boot stuff, probably created either by Acronis or UBCD4Win.
I would appreciate collecting some opinions/analysis of this approach.
When you boot to the Windows 7 DVD and select to repair the computer, is bootmgr and \boot on the System Reserved partition? This is the normal setup for a Windows 7 install. These booting files won't be on the Windows partition. In addition, the System Reserved partition should be Active. Running the "automatic repair" option will not fix the problem if the wrong partition is Active.
Note: I assume the partition is 100MB, not 100GB.