Win7 x64 WILLNOT BOOT after restore
Using TI Home 11. Disk recover kept failing, so I had to recover piece meal. Manually partitioned the array to match what used to be there: C: primary/active, E: primary (recovery partition)
Was able to directly recover the E: partition.
Partition recovery of c: kept failing about 1/3 through
So I did a file-by-file recovery for the entire c: - this worked. But now it absolutely will not boot. When my machine attempts to boot from the drive, it hangs for a while and the c: is blinking a lot (appears to be scanning the entire drive for something). Then it eventually stops and then nothing ...
I've tried everything I can think of: I've used the bootsect /nt60 all command to make sure the partition boot sectors are all right - no dice. Incrementally have used the bootrec commands just in case, but also with no luck.
The bootmgr and boot directory appear to be in tact. bcdedit shows a normal looking bcd pointing to the C: and to the correct winload file/location. For good measure I've tried deleting the BCD and rebuilding a new one ... it too looks fine.
Ugh!!
I don't think it's advancing to the point where it launches winload, let alone having an opportunity to use F8.
I have the installation CD, that and the Acronis recovery CD are the only items I can boot with. And yes, from a cmd prompt I've done all the bootrec stuff as I indicated above. As I said, the BCD looks fine ... when I do the rebuildbcd it finds the windows install fine and as I stated above the new BCD looks good too.
Reinstalling windows is not an option. WTH is the point of having a backup/recovery tool if you have to start from scratch anyway? I already spent 2 weeks going through the file-by-file recovery. Reloading all of the software, piecemeal recovering my data, and getting everything setup just the way I like it will take another 2 or 3 weeks. This is turning out to NOT be easy. It looks like everything is there (browsing around from a command prompt). I just need it to boot now!
Try downloading Easy BCD from http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1. Scroll down to the free download link. Have it write a new MBR etc based on your OS.
That looks nifty ... but it does not come with a boot disk, so how do I run this on a machine that won't boot?
I added a new non-raid drive, installed win7 onto it, and installed EasyBCD onto that. Used EasyBCD to rewrite the MBR and also added an an entry to the new drive's BCD pointing to the windows installation on the original volume.
At bootup if I choose the new installation of win7 of course it loads. But if I choose the old (acronis recovered) installation, I still get nothing ... just the same black screen and apparently nothing happening.
Just noticed a typo in my original post ... TI 2011 (not TI 11)
See http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Creating+a+Bootable+USB+Drive for creating a bootable USB drive and also this http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Editing+a+BCD+on+a+different+disk. These links are from the BCD help.
Yeah, you need a working x64 operating system to create a bootable x64 USB drive. In any case, I already took care of this by stuffing another drive in the machine (see post #5 above).
So that's not a win7 X64 install that you added? Have you tried building Windows repair disk off this new install and use that to repair the drive?
Robert,
Just to make sure, is the right partition marked active?
@thomasjk - I did added a win7 x64, so I don't need a bootable USB now. Before I added a drive and installed win7 on it, I could not make a bootable USB.
@PatL - yes it is active, see my very first post.
Maybe this has/had something to do with the fact that the volume is a RAID volume. In any case I finally gave up and just wiped the volume again and installed win7 on it. Of course I was able to restore all of my data from the backup. But now for the past week, and for who knows how long I'll be screwing with reinstalling software and getting things setup the way I like again. I'm pretty ticked off with Acronis.
Robert,
ATI is, in general, pretty good with backup and restore. Issues are often because of lack of hardware support in the recovery CD, and, less frequently, issues with archive corruption.
I don't know why your restore kept failing. Were you doing this from the recovery CD?
You were trying an difficult task (restore file by file) and then fix the boot files. I don't know how file-based recovery software (like Genie Backup Manager) do this in detail, but I am not surprised that a manual process doesn't quite work.
The RAID thing could get in your way if your have a software RAID (set up through Windows disk management or other OS-level utility), or if you have a hardware RAID (set up through the BIOS typically) that wouldn't be supported by the recovery CD.
I was trying to recover from the ATI recovery CD. Possible points of interest:
- The volume is a hardware RAID
- ATI recovery CD seemed to have no problem writing to the RAID volume
- The only large scale recovery that worked (sort of) with ATI recovery CD
was file-by-file, all files selected, connected to NAS via FTP, this worked
but the system would not boot for other reasons
- Other attempts to recover with the ATI recovery CD that failed include:
disk recover via normal connection to NAS, disk recover via FTP connection
to NAS, file-by-file all files via normal connection to NAS
The problem appeared to be lack of ability to sustain a connection to the NAS for
any period of time longer than about 30 minutes. This problem does not seem to
be evident when running ATI from windows (vs. the rescue CD)
I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that the rescue CD was built on
a 32-bit XP machine and I was trying to run it on a 64-bit machine?
The recovery CD is completely independent from the machine you use to produce it. Produce it on one machine and it should run on any machine, provided there is no linux driver support issue for a given hardware configuration :-)
It seems like ATI has some trouble with your NAS. ATI seems to have trouble with NAS anyway.
Could you try to recover from a local disk (internal or external), just to make sure you have a network/NAS issue?
Well the conclusion I arrived at is that the rescue CD has trouble with the NAS
... but I haven't seen NAS problems with ATI running on a regular windows boot disk
Sure would have been nice to know this before I wasted 3 weeks trying to recover the system from the rescue CD.
That ATI running from windows can backup to NAS is good, but not a given, since other users have had issues there also.
The problem is that when you restore, ATI from windows makes the computer reboot into the same linux version running from the recovery CD. So I would expect that process to fail where the recovery CD is failing as well. If it works, then you have an issue only with the recovery CD and that is unusual.