Use of Win PE3 boot disk
Yesterday I had that interminal automatic repair - attempting to fix errors - problem could not be resolved loop, with PC going round and round that loop.
I have a modern Sony Vaio (less 6 months old) with Sony assist etc.
I did not want to reset my PC to factory condition, but none of the other repair options were available. So I decided to do a full reocevry using an acronis backup a few days earlier.
I did the backup using the standard recovery disk (linux) with acronis true image 2013 and it seemed to go ok until it rebooted and guess what it started looping as above!
I was worried then that the backup was corrupted. I decided to recover again using the Win PE4 disk I had made with the plus pack. I selected same backup file and did a full disk recovery. The Win PE disk complained there were files on the target disk (the Linux did not), and I allowed it to delete file/partitions.
This time the recovery seemed to work, and when it rebooted it seemd to sit there for ages (probably about 1 minute but nerves are frayed by now), and then it rebooted into Windows 8 ok.
I do not know why the Linux recovery failed whereas the Win PE4 worked, but something went wrong.
I am also puzzled why my PC went wrong initially - most failures are normally as a result of some badly installed software. I have all the usual firewalls, virus checkers etc.
I have had several strange failures and \i have check the hardware and come to the conclusion that Winodws 8 is simply not as robuat as its predecessors (especially windows 7 which was so reliable I got lazy at doing backups).
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I am inclined to agree Colin, but I think Somy Vaios have their own quirks as well e.g. I never managed to boot Win PE4 disk in EUFI mode even with security disabled (I did install hot patch). I can only ever legacy boot, but on Vaio it is easy to switch.
I have tried most other backup packages (macrium, todo, ghost, paragon, windows 7) and they all failed as well for various reasons.
So for new Vaio users with Windows 8, create a Win PE 4 disk (sorry theads says PE3), and you should be able to to get a full disk recovery. (That was true for prevous version - I have not tested latest version yet but it seesm to have lot of problems with Windows GFT disks). For time being, I am sticking to older version).
If this does not work, there is a fall back aproach:
When doing backup do a full disk backup, and then a separate full partition backup.
Try and recover via full disk backup. if that failes, then try the following:
Reinstate PC to initial state, using Sony' Recovery disk (or USB). This takes a couple of hours but puts PC back to its factory installed sate.
Reinstate PC back to currrent day simply by doing a C partition (and E partition where I store my data) recovery only. This recovery does not touch the fancy hidden recoveries, and hence shopuld be quite reliable.
Actually, I guess this fall back approach should work on any PC which can reinstate the initial operating system.
Of course you should not have to do it, but this method has saved me when all else failed.
You could take a pragmatic view and only do a full disk backup say monthly, and a partition only back up weekly. Thus even if the full recovery works (avoiding a lengthy PC reset to initial state), you will still be able to recover to the last week very quickly.
So do both a full disk backup and a partition (choose all of them).
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