Macrium Reflect, Backup/restore from Rescue Environment or Windows?

Hello,
I have Macrium Reflect v8 Free. I have a new Dell XPS Desktop (I regret buying a Dell now). I have already created a disk image of the machine’s main hard drive, which is a nvme drive, in the Macrium rescue environment.

I would like to know you guys’ opinions on the optimal way to backup and restore using macrium. Do you like to create the rescue usb and run from the rescue environment? Or do you prefer to use the program in the windows environment?


Additionally, if I made a mistake by running the backup from the rescue environment, how do I fix it? Because as soon as I booted up from imaging the disk, windows popped up with a notification pictured.


And my pc has hit me with error after error since.

I have used both ways and I don't see any differences. I have no idea of why you are getting that error message.

Does the computer boot to the Windows desktop? If it does, try holding the shift key while hitting the restart option. It might have something to do with Fast Start.

Fast Start was disabled as well as power settings set to high performance using control panel.

I think you made a back-up of a broken Windows (corrupted important files - in particular).

neves said:

I think you made a back-up of a broken Windows (corrupted important files - in particular).

Click to expand...

The machine was straight out of the box. From Dell. Is it possible or probable that they do something to the OS on their machines prior to shipping?

Genuine question, bc I’ve had problems with not only the original pc I bought, but the replacement they sent

ddbbmm190010 said:

The machine was straight out of the box. From Dell. Is it possible or probable that they do something to the OS on their machines prior to shipping?

Genuine question, bc I’ve had problems with not only the original pc I bought, but the replacement they sent

Click to expand...

If the system was sealed - then it came like that from the factory. If not, probably handled by Dell support. Usually, it does come with preinstalled bloatware (quite famous in this regard - some of their proprietary software even had a noticible performance impact). Personally, i'd prefer - a clean install even on a new Dell system. Even tho, you can usually remove the extra proprietary apps - if you don't find them useful (or quite the opposite).

You could try running: sfc /scannow - from terminal/cmd - see if it checks out (hopefully that cached copy of Windows wasn't affected - since it usually ins't).

@OP I also have an XPS, albeit an older one, it is a very good machine, sorry to hear about your troubles. I suggest running the following commands as administrator:

sfc /scannow
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
msdt.exe -id DeviceDiagnostic

You may want/need to run the commands several times in any order, until you can run:

Reset this PC, select the options 'Remove everything' and 'Clean disk'

This should give you OOBE to start anew.

If the above does not work, then the next step would be to clean install the OS. But following the above steps MAY give you some insight what went wrong (may be important now that you are on a replacement already) whereas doing a clean install of the OS will not give you any insight of what went wrong. Good luck!