Recover Dual Boot WIN7-Vista partitions Suggestion needed
I have loaded Win 7 on a separate partition on my Windows Vista computer in a dual boot setup using the default Microsoft boot manager. All is working well and so is TI-2010.
My only issue is that every time I remove and restore the Vista or Win-7 partition, I have to use the WIN-7 Rescue Disk to recover the boot manager. Once the machine boots twice on recovery, the M.S. boot manager
is fully restored and all is well. I just don't like this extra step as it may introduce more chance of errors in recovery in the future.
If I delete and recover the Vista partition, only one reboot is required and two reboots for the Win-7 or visa- versa (I forgot) (all during the Win-7 recovery disk operation).
I've tried selecting recover MBR also and this doesn't work and seems to make matters worse as then neither Vista or Win-7 partitions are found on the first WIN7 rescue disk process/boot and requires a second reboot (quite scary and I'm not confident with this process).
Can someone guide me on a plan so I only need to use the TI-2010 boot/recovery disk to recover both the partition along with the boot manager.
Why are you deleting/removing the partition(s) before you do the restore? That may be what's causing the problems. You should be able to restore over the existing partition.
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Are you always restoring the same image of either Vista or Windows 7?
Have you tried making a new image after the boot repair is applied and then restoring that image to see if it still requires a repair?
After the restore, does the non-restored partition boot okay? For example: If you restore the Vista partition, does Windows 7 boot and Vista doesn't? Or is it the other way around? Or does neither boot?
You should only have one Active partition. If Vista was installed first, it's probably that partition. When you do the restores, are you keeping the correct partition set Active? For example: Vista is restored as an Active Primary partition. Windows 7 would be restored as just a Primary partition.
Good question.
Possible trojan-virus encountered and sometimes a rogue program installation (magic ISO ) trashed the OS. So I simply delete the partition and restore it.
Would you just want to write over an infected partition; I'd rather delete it ? I don't actually know the answer but better safe than sorry.
Had no problem with just VISTA alone
Unless Acronis has changed something in the later versions of TI (I haven't checked), TI deletes and recreates the partition before it does the restore. There shouldn't be a need to manually delete it.
Have you run a test of creating a new backup image of the Windows 7 partition and then just restoring it? If it's a good image (no virus, etc.) then you don't have to worry about any of that. Make sure to restore the partition as its current type (Active/Primary or just Primary).
Note that TI doesn't always handle the BCD file properly for multi-boot setups. This may be one of those cases.
Ill try just restoring next time and se what happens. I thought maybe someone from the TI company would have knowledge of my scenario.
Just to go further on this. I'd restore both my Vista and Win-7 partitions in a dual boot configuration with total success.
My thoughts are that the format option of my previous deletions possibly wiped out the MS boot manager. Just simply restoring my image over the existing image worked with no need to do a recovery.
Hello all,
I would like to image or clone a 300GB hdd that is a two partition dual boot (Vista64 and Win7 64) and then restore it to a larger drive.
Vista is on C: and Win7 is on D:. I'm using TI 2011 Home. I've been reading through this forum and have visited MudCrab's website (very informative site).
I guess my question is: If TI makes an exact copy of the hard drive, whether by cloning or imaging, why do people have problems restoring the image or transferring the clone to a new drive? It seems like you should only have to keep the correct active partition order and that would be it. Are we making this harder than it should be, or is TI doing something to the MBR that it shouldn't?
I would really like to get clear on this. Thanks
There are quite a few things that can go wrong and cause booting problems. If you take the scenario where you image every sector of a drive and then place that image on another drive, you have an exact copy and it should work in the same way as the original (assuming Windows didn't see them both and change the Disk Signature).
A lot of booting problems come about from one or more "links" being broken. The MBR is loaded first, which then (normally) points to the Active partition. Then the boot sector code looks for the loader (ntldr/bootmgr, etc.) and runs it. The boot loader looks in the booting file(s) for the OS and then attempts to launch it or display the boot menu. If any of these steps get broken, the system won't boot properly.
TI usually does a pretty good job of updating the BCD file for a standard single OS. However, it does not have a good track record with multi-boot systems. In a lot of cases, one OS will boot okay and the other(s) require a repair.
Additionally, even if everything in the boot-up process works perfectly, you can still get into problems if drive letter assignments are not correct. This can happen when the Disk Signature changes or a partition moves.
Your question is more targeted to the MBR, but the MBR is only one piece of a much larger process. A lot of people blame the MBR when they have booting problems -- quite often when it's just fine.
It sounds like you're using the Windows Boot Manager (C: = Vista, D: = Windows 7). This type of setup can be even more difficult to keep intact when moved (say, to a new drive). I much prefer having each OS completely on its own partition.