Can't boot after Recovering disk from a Windows 7 .VHD backup image.
Hi there,
My laptop drive went belly up over Christmas and have since been trying to recover from my windows backup.
I had been backing up to my NAS across my home network, and thought I was all set, but after much gnashing of teeth, I discovered that windows doesn't play well with network backups unless they are in the root directory of the restore drive (ugh). I then spent a week copying the backup contents from the NAS to a 3TB drive via USB, only to have a similar problem!
So, I have purchased Acronis True Image 2017, in the hopes that it could help me recover my backup!
I've attempted the restore three times now, and I'm now losing faith and any hope that I'll get my disk back.
I have a new, fresh 1TB drive and it's in the same machine that suffered the crash. I'm running Windows 7 Professional.
I have created the bootable media, and ran through the recovery options.
I use MBR, as the bootmode on this computer is BIOS, and I've tried a number of variations with regards to the restoring of partitions (I'm a little confused with regards to the partitions, MBRs, etc. and what I see doesn't completely tie into the sticky re: disk recovery).
On each occasions, True Image successfully finds my backup file, and after around 2 hours, completes the data recovery.
But I can't get past this point.
When I reboot, I get the Windows Boot Manager screen error indicating "The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible"
I've subsequently tried numerous options from this point. Using the various bootrec switches to FixMbr, FixBoot, ScanOS, RebuildBCD etc. and nothing.
ScanOS and RebuildBCD fail to find any Windows installations.
When I boot from a Windows 7 Disk, and go into Repair mode, it DOES see a Windows installation, but it shows a 0MB partition size on drive D:??
I've tried automatic system repair, but it just hangs.
If I run diskpart, I see one disk 0, two primary partitions, 1 and 2, 100MB and 903GB respectively. I ensured that 1 was set to active, and 2 to inactive.
If I try and do "dir" of C: it says "corrupt or unreadable", and D: seems to be empty and the label is "SYSTEM RESEVRED"(?)
I have no reason to think there is anything wrong with my backup image (wouldn't it fail recovery if it was compromised?)
As I mentioned, I'm also somewhat confused by the disk recovery options, in that C: is reserved/100MB and D: is the 903GB, yet the opposite seems true, in the "dir" case.
Any help, suggestions or ideas would be much appreciated.
Hopefully I haven't wasted my money.
Thanks in advance,
Graham
Oh wow, well that's disappointing.
I found more than one resource online that suggested ATIH as a result of Windows not being able to recover its own native image file using restore methods. There appears to be an issue with Windows not finding images that have not been backed up to the root directory of storage devices, and in many of the cases I stumbedd across, ATIH was a suggested remedy.
Are you aware of any other products that might accomplish thid for me? Or any other suggestions other than the Windows 7 Rescue/Installation dvd - which just don't work.
Thank you.
Graham, please see KB document: 3648: Restoring Windows 7 VHD Backup Files with Acronis True Image Home which is the last mention of restoring VHD files and shows that only ATIH 2014 and earlier versions had this capability.
I can only suggest searching on Google or Bing etc for any other ways that you may be able to do this if you cannot get the Microsoft recommended method to work for you.
You can always open a Support Case directly with Acronis Support given you have purchased ATIH 2017 and see if they can offer any further suggestions to help you here.