Universal Restore Option Unavailable. Possibly related to boot loader. Propopsed fix.

I had problems with the Universal Restore option not appearing, even though I was trying to restore a valid Windows 7.1 image. I was using ATI 2014.

I believe (but cannot prove) this was related ATI2014 not being able to identify the valid windows 7.1 image. I believe this is because the boot loader in this image had been modified by DiskCryptor. The files themselves were not encrypted (I verified this). They were not encrypted because the backup was created using the ATI2014 running in Windows (as compared to booting from the CD). Since running Acronis in this mode is 'post-encryption', Acronis is unaware the files are encrypted (of course any restored partition will be unencrypted, but will have a boot loader with a signature containing information from Diskcryptor). I have restored paritions from this type of image MANY times successfully.

Even if I restored the bootloader (using WINPE to boot; the disk containing DiskCryptor) Acronis would not present the universal restore option.

What I ultimately had to do to restore and port my system to new hardware was:

1. Restore my partiion using Acronis restore (without universal restore)
2. boot WINPE and restore the bootloader
3. use NEOSMART's EasyRE software to 'restore' drivers for the new system.

NEOSMART's EasyRE is awesome!!

I believe TIH 2014 is probably too rigid in determining if the partition to be restored contains a supported OS.