Partition recovery failed
I have an HP Pavilion DV7-3111ea Laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium. My computer has developed an intermittent slowness problem lately. The cause seems to have been a different backup program (Memeo) which came with a Seagate external HD. Although I have now uninstalled both Memeo Backup and the Seagate Dashboard program, one or other may have caused a lasting conflict with either Acronis or Windows Defender (which somehow got switched on) or both.
I am now trying to restore to an earlier state. Windows 7's own system restore service gives me a choice of points either post-Memeo installation or corrupted ones.
However, I did an Acronis backup last October. Today I tried to recover it. I was given a choice of Drive C and/or MBR + Track 0. I chose Drive C and the process began at about 4:45 this afternoon. The screen was faintly illuminated but blank throughout. At 10:15 I began to wonder if the process might not end with an automatic reboot and I would have to guess whether it had finished or not. I would have let the thing run all night, but I felt the temperature of the laptop and its base was too hot to touch. I switched off, let the machine cool down, booted up, to find that my installation was the same as this morning.
Can anyone suggest how I can repair my existing installation? (I have asked in the Windows 7 forums, but no one has replied.) Failing that, if I try again, how can I bring up a progress barometer, to see when the process finishes, and how can I stop the machine from overheating?
Thanks for any advice.
Thank you for your reply.
No, I didn't use a TI Rescue CD. I don't think I ever made one. Does it have to be made at the same time as the image is made, or can I make one now?
It can be made now but having one is very imiportant. If you were in a situation where your hard drive was not booting properly or failed and you needed to do a restore, the Rescue CD is your only vehicle to recovery. It is important to have one and make sure it sees your hard drives before a problem arises. Should your CD created fromyour install menu not work, you can also download a "bootable Media" from your registration page.
Create the Rescue/Recovery CD from you Windows installation and then retry your partition recovery when booted from the CD.
If you have some extra time, click on my signature index below and check out indiex item #2 on the importance of having a "working" CD.
It's beginning to look as if my initial problem was caused by the Memeo backup because it went on for 60 hours. The high temperature may have affected some hardware components. I've bought a cooling mat and downloaded a temperature monitor, to see whether any component has been permanently damaged.
In the meantime, two other problems have arisen.
I have made an Acronis TI Rescue Disk and tried it out. I get the Acronis screen, I choose the Acronis option (rather than Load Windows), then the screen goes blank and nothing happens. I have made 3 rescue disks and the same thing happens with all of them.
The second problem arises from the list of boot options. I can not only pick the bootable CD option, but also the clone of my hard drives made a few days. These are on a 500-GB internal HD (for Desktop not Laptop) in a caddy. Although this is a desktop HD, as it is supposed to be a clone of my laptop HD, shouldn't it boot up inside the caddy?
Anyway, it doesn't. I get two options, start Windows normally or the repair option. (I assume the copy of Windows it will try to repair is the one on my laptop internal HD.)
The point is: if I re-lay this mirror image back onto my laptop CD, won't it still fail to boot?
Final question: where on earth is my Acronis serial number hidden?