How to debug problems with the MVP WinPE recovery medium
A couple days ago I had need to recover my test PC. In the past I have always relied on the MVP WinPE recovery medium but this time I got a "Recovery failed" message. (At least I think that was what it said. That was certainly the idea conveyed.) I got this first trying to recover from a backup on a NAS, trying to recover from a local external drive. The PC was still usable so I created an Advanced recovery medium from the ATI Rescue Media Builder and recovered from the NAS with no problems so the backup was obviously good.
I've checked that the MVP recovery tool was at the Build 21400 level. The tool was build on the system I was trying to recover using the ADK option.
I'm not sure what else to check. If I try the recovery again I assume I should look at the ATI logs. What else do I do?
Thanks, Steve. I knew I should have grabbed the logs. I was sort of flailing around and didn't think of that until it was too late.
There error message was really not helpful. Getting a screen capture would have allowed me to quote it exactly, but would not have provided any diagnostic information.
I will try doing a validation. There is no sense of my doing another recovery since the recovery using the Advanced Rescue Media succeeded. (But I expect the validation will succeed since the backup files were good enough to allow a recovery.)
I'm pretty sure I must have done something wrong when running the MVP WinPE Builder since the MVP recovery tool failed but the ATI-built tool succeeded.
Patrick, in addition to the logs from the backup, create a system report in the rescue media too, it might have more information on the issue.
As far as the rescue medium used (MVP or original) - all of the backup and recovery functionality is purely out of the True Image application. There are no other special features in the MVP tool helping out with that process, just the creation of the actual rescue media and add-on tools to make it more usable.
When I was trouble shooting my 2020 backup issue with the offline WinPE rescue media, it was "successfully" failing with both the original 2020 rescue media and the MVP rescue media.
Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:There are no other special features in the MVP tool helping out with that process, just the creation of the actual rescue media and add-on tools to make it more usable.
I suspect, then, that I messed up the build process - maybe involving drivers. (I'm not sure how I might have done that, but I have some interesting talents.)
I'll try it again (tomorrow) and see what I can find.
The only things I would check would be to see if you used the same ADK or the same WinRE for both builds, or was one, and one the other?
I never really use the option to include all local system drivers in the MVP ADK (WinPE) build. That's a lot of unnecessisary drives in many cases. WinRE will have local system drivers already anyway so use that instead if needed. Personally, I keep the ADK drivers very small, just adding the default custom drivers for IRST and KillerEthernet NIC. Actually though, Windows 10 1903 ADK supports both out of the box, pretty well now, but I still like having the latest IRST there, just in case.
Steve Smith wrote:Patrick, the Logs in the rescue media ATI application have to be the starting place and I would recommend saving the log(s) by right-clicking on the top date/time entry shown.
Another suggestion would be to use the option to capture some screen images of any errors (using the IrfanView tool included in the MVP media).
Lastly, have you tried doing a Validation for the backup file from the rescue media?
I finally got back to testing this. I tried validating several backups (one of which I had successfully used for recovery using the ATI Rescue Media). The MVP tool immediately reported "The archive is corrupted." for each backup. Rather than trying to figure out IrfanView, I just copied one of the logs:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<log uuid="D018D4DB-FEF9-4C19-9D11-D2CE42CB48F1" product="Acronis True Image" version="24.4" build="21400" task_name="Backup Validation" >
<event id="1" level="2" module="100" code="0" time="1571633903" message="Operation "Backup Validation" started." />
<event id="2" level="4" module="510" code="1" time="1571633903" message="Failed to run a child process." line_tag="0x4DF5A451C224A5E9">
<field name="$module" type="TIdentifier">
trueimg_home_pe_vsa64_21400
</field>
<event id="3" level="4" module="0" code="65520" time="1571633903" message="The parameter is incorrect" line_tag="0xBD28FDBD64EDB8F1">
<field name="code" type="TULong64">
2147942487
</field>
<field name="$module" type="TIdentifier">
trueimg_home_pe_vsa64_21400
</field>
</event>
</event>
<event id="4" level="2" module="339" code="1" time="1571633903" message="Using default upnp detection algorithm." />
<event id="5" level="4" module="100" code="252" time="1571633903" message="The archive is corrupted." />
<event id="6" level="2" module="339" code="1" time="1571633904" message="Discovered upnp device: http://192.168.1.31:8080/upnpd/e4b7119b40.xml" />
</log>
"Failed to run a child process." and "The parameter is incorrect" don't sound very good. I think I'll try rebuilding the tool.
Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:The only things I would check would be to see if you used the same ADK or the same WinRE for both builds, or was one, and one the other?
I never really use the option to include all local system drivers in the MVP ADK (WinPE) build. That's a lot of unnecessisary drives in many cases. WinRE will have local system drivers already anyway so use that instead if needed. Personally, I keep the ADK drivers very small, just adding the default custom drivers for IRST and KillerEthernet NIC. Actually though, Windows 10 1903 ADK supports both out of the box, pretty well now, but I still like having the latest IRST there, just in case.
I'm not sure why I originally went with the ADK technique but once I got it working I stuck with it. I thought that was the only way to get wireless support, but I may have misunderstood. (And I don't actually need wireless support but I want it as an option.) I don't add any extra drivers so I doubt my problem is with drivers. I just could not think of any other possible problem.
The WinPE system itself seems to work fine. No problem accessing drives, running applications, etc. And ATI seems to function fine ... except that it can do recovery or validation. I didn't try a backup but I suspect that would fail, too.
I'd be curious if your backup works or not - I've got this one PC it was constantly failing on - resetting system protection (turn off and on and resize if needed) somehow seems to have "fixed" it though and I can now backup with 2020 rescue media. I haven't tried validating because there seems to be a bug where selecting the process to validate with it, is just ignored when you select the option immediately after backup. Maybe the two issues are related somehow.
The WinRE supports wireless by default (if drivers are available, but they should be). The WinPE can support it with the extra features in the MVP tool, but most WinPE built with default ADK won't. I think we pointed you to this method because of issues with wireless and network backups (both at the same time) in the Linux rescue media. I think we started off with networking using Net use to mount a drive letter and then went from there. Been awhile though so a little foggy.