Msg W00040011 Specify location of volume XX

The message W00040011 can be generated for several reasons.

If the tib archives were created stand-alone, and a verify is done under Windows, I got the message.

If the NTFS information is corrupted, the partition can be backed up and the back-up archive may verify OK, but restoration gets the message.

Even though the message prevents a full partition restore, there is a work-around. One can do a file-by file restore. This leaves additional problems that have to be solved.

The partition will not be bootable. There is a boot.ini that needs to be tweaked. In my case, the hybernate function was damaged so that it would corrupt the file system if I shut Windows down with the hybernate option.

All of these problems could be solved, and eventually were solved, by booting the Windows 7 update medium. It is not obvious from the documentation in the box that there is a great deal of repair programming available when you boot the DVD, but there is.

Hitting F11 during the boot process allows you to boot from the DVD and get Windows running, from a ram-disk, with access to tools like chkdsk /f.

Once you get windows working enough to boot the partition, Microsoft's upgrade procedure, which involves running an .exe from the upgrade DVD, will completely optimize the files on the boot partition, as well as perform numerous other corrections, if it finds damage to the old Windows system.

It took about 5 hours to replace Windows Vista with Windows 7 on my machine.

It is fortunate that the backups were for preparation for the conversion when I got the message. If I wanted to stay with the old Windows Vista boot partition, it would have been very difficult to find all of the errors and fix them.

One should probably run "chkdsk/f c:" before backing up the C: partition as a matter of prudence.

He should also keep a pencil and paper record of the exact boundaries of all partitions, since the True Image program sometimes wipes out the partition information on the disk when it detects some other error, making recovery much more difficult than if the partition table were intact.

And finally, if you back it up with the bootable media, you have to restore it using bootable media, not with a Windows task, at least with the 2009 version of True Image.

The button that allows one to boot the Windows update media DVD in safe mode is F8, not F11. Sorry about that.