Restore Will Not Complete

I made a backup with Windows Backup and Restore before the hard drive was wiped and Windows 11 reinstalled. I have been unsuccessful to Restore the system backup. Settings - system - Recovery - Advanced startup (restart with Repair disc in external CDROM drive - Troubleshoot - Advanced Options - System Image Recovery. The scan finds the backup file on an external hard drive, but when I click next, at Choose additional restore options the message is to create a repair disc now if I haven't, but I have. I created another disc but the same situation happened. I cannot get it to complete the restore. Any ideas?

not clear what are describing.

you need to boot from the disc.

or boot from installation media if you have it on usb stick.

At the Advanced startup, I have done the restart with a Repair disc and Windows Installation Media, both ways resulted in the same result, the message to create these discs.

Argh. I seem to recall reading recently about a known issue with System Image. I thought it had something to do specifically with using optical media. I'm trying to find the issue but having some difficulty. In the meantime, try booting from a USB Flash Disk rather than optical media to see if that helps.

If I find the issue I will post back here.

Found it. The issue was a bit older than I had thought and I'm not sure if it was ever resolved. In any case, my suggestion would still be to try using a UFD as the boot medium to see if that helps.

Ultimately, I would also suggest moving away from the Backup and Restore (Windows 7) app since Microsoft themselves even advises this.

UPDATE - The issue is now resolved:


If you are using old recovery media, try recreating it on a system that has the fix or try a UFD.

Recreating the backup is not an option at this time. I backed up because of physical repairs that wiped the hard drive. Now I am trying to restore. I'm going to try using a bootable USB drive with Installation media installed.

I have just tried it for the first time on win11.

It creates a separate vhdx for the esp part. I dont remember that, must be new.



one way to test :

at admin cmd prompt

reagentc /boottore
(press enter)

then restart

click Troubleshoot



click system image recovery

I does no good to create a backup now. The image on the computer now is just win 11.

nobody suggested creating an image now. We were under the impression you want to restore one you made previously.

cant do the restore from within windows. need to boot to winre or some other media such as installation usb stick

Are you suggesting to use Setup Repair rather than System Image Restore?

as far as I know using the bmrui.exe restores the entire image. For granularity one could use wbadmin commands or pick up the vhd with one of the many programs that can work with them, such as 7-zip or diskgenius.

phildaily said:

Are you suggesting to use Setup Repair rather than System Image Restore?

Click to expand...

are you not able to get the same as in my screenshots?

I'm sure I can get to the Advanced Options page (looks different) but I have not tried the Setup Repair Option. I will try later because I am making a installation media USB.

I didnt use the startup repair.

I clicked system image recovery. You can see the cursor in the screenshot.

phildaily said:

Recreating the backup is not an option at this time. I backed up because of physical repairs that wiped the hard drive. Now I am trying to restore. I'm going to try using a bootable USB drive with Installation media installed.

Click to expand...

I am NOT saying to recreate the backup. The issue is simply recreating the boot disk if you have a pre-fixed disk, or use a UFD to boot rather than optical media.

I was able to add the USB drive as first boot option, and make it to Re-image your computer. The immediate message was:
The system image restore failed
Error details: windows did not find any disk which it can use for recreating volumes present in backup. Offline disks, cluster shared disks or disks explicitly excluded by user will not be used by Windows. Ensure that disks are online and no disks are excluded by mistake. (0x80042414).

At Choose additional restore options window, I could not click on Format and repartition disks, and didn't click on Install drivers or Advanced but clicked on Next>.

I hope you manage to get your system restored. I know it doesn't help you now but the backup function inside Windows 10/11 was deprecated in 8.1 and its use has been hit and miss since then. Microsoft themselves advise that a third party backup solution should be used. With all the reports on MS own forum about it not working correctly, I have never understood why MS doesn't remove it. Good luck to you.

I have heard of the deprecation, but unfortunately not before the backup was made. I'm afraid I'm sunk after wasting a great deal of time, which does not endear me to MS.