Hi I've just spent a day taking System Image backup images of three different hard drives. Well ok I didn't just sit and watch the bar move across the screen although it did hold up my computer. Anyway, what a waste of a day from my PC because when I try to restore using System Image backup from my USB drive, the USB drive cannot be found. I have followed the procedure on page 750 of Configuring Windows 7, 70-680 precisely. I tried booting from an OS DVD and a Windows Repair DVD, but no USB drive. I tried using a blank usb stick and that can't be found either. The USB drive can be seen when I logon to Windows to get the images on it. Might this be more to do with hardware such as adjusting BIOS boot settings, or updating BIOS firmware. There seems to be others with unresolved problems like this. Should I join them and buy Acronis instead? Tx

Microsoft System Image restore for Windows 7 doesn't work by the looks. Maybe I should get Acronis then.

I found this on line. Don't know if it will help you but it's something. Read it carefully. Restart your computer with external HD plugged in Click: Control Panel>System & Security>Backup & Restore>Recover System Settings or your computer>Advanced Recovery Methods>Use a system image you created earlier... At this point it says it can't find the back up...and it asks you to backup the files now...click SKIP and on the next page it gives you the option to restart or cancel. Click RESTART. When the computer restarts it boots in recovery mode or whatever you call it and it is there I am able to restore the image....and you should too!!

Microsoft System Image restore for Windows 7 doesn't work by the looks. Maybe I should get Acronis then.

Tried it but no joys. I get the same thing as when booting off of a Windows Repair DVD. By this I mean I carried out your procedure above, rebooted to go into the recovery mode and then get the message "Windows cannot find a system image on this system". I do not retry because I get the same thing and my only option is to select a backup I want to restore. When I do that I get no backup listed. Just a thought but what if the backup on the usb hard drive is like our banks (corrupt). Shouldn't I still be able to see the usb drive anyway? Does the backup file have to be a backup of the existing hard drive rather than that of another hard drive?

Tried it but no joys. I get the same thing as when booting off of a Windows Repair DVD. By this I mean I carried out your procedure above, rebooted to go into the recovery mode and then get the message "Windows cannot find a system image on this system". I do not retry because I get the same thing and my only option is to select a backup I want to restore. When I do that I get no backup listed. Just a thought but what if the backup on the usb hard drive is like our banks (corrupt). Shouldn't I still be able to see the usb drive anyway? Does the backup file have to be a backup of the existing hard drive rather than that of another hard drive? Have you tried plugging into an alternate USB port on your sys? Have you unplugged the external from: 1. The wall to let it reset? 2. The sys, and then into an alternate port? Just a thought...and BTW...after you've unplugged all, boot your sys without the external and then tried the above? (after the reboot plug all back in to see if win picks it back up) Good luck Horatio

Tried it but no joys. I get the same thing as when booting off of a Windows Repair DVD. By this I mean I carried out your procedure above, rebooted to go into the recovery mode and then get the message "Windows cannot find a system image on this system". I do not retry because I get the same thing and my only option is to select a backup I want to restore. When I do that I get no backup listed. Just a thought but what if the backup on the usb hard drive is like our banks (corrupt). Shouldn't I still be able to see the usb drive anyway? Does the backup file have to be a backup of the existing hard drive rather than that of another hard drive? Have you tried plugging into an alternate USB port on your sys? Have you unplugged the external from: 1. The wall to let it reset? 2. The sys, and then into an alternate port? Just a thought...and BTW...after you've unplugged all, boot your sys without the external and then tried the above? (after the reboot plug all back in to see if win picks it back up) Good luck Horatio Yes I tried on different days to do the same thing and varied the sequence of when I insterted the usb drive. I tried another socket at the front this time and with a usb stick instead and it wouldn't see that either. Does there have to be a backup file on the stick for the stick to be seen? I tried Acronis and it sees my external drive and backs up much faster. Maybe Microsoft decided it didn't want to steal the thunder of Acronis and Symantec and didn't put too much effort into making Windows 7 imaging work well.

Hi, Could you please check the following newsgroup posts for your answer. The posts lists different scenarios that might work for you. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsbackup/thread/9a082b90-bd7c-46f8-9eb3-9581f9d5efdd http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsbackup/thread/11d8c552-a841-49ac-ab2e-445e6f95e704 http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsbackup/thread/9a082b90-bd7c-46f8-9eb3-9581f9d5efdd Best Regards, Kim ZhouPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Tried it but no joys. I get the same thing as when booting off of a Windows Repair DVD. By this I mean I carried out your procedure above, rebooted to go into the recovery mode and then get the message "Windows cannot find a system image on this system". I do not retry because I get the same thing and my only option is to select a backup I want to restore. When I do that I get no backup listed. Just a thought but what if the backup on the usb hard drive is like our banks (corrupt). Shouldn't I still be able to see the usb drive anyway? Does the backup file have to be a backup of the existing hard drive rather than that of another hard drive? Have you tried plugging into an alternate USB port on your sys? Have you unplugged the external from: 1. The wall to let it reset? 2. The sys, and then into an alternate port? Just a thought...and BTW...after you've unplugged all, boot your sys without the external and then tried the above? (after the reboot plug all back in to see if win picks it back up) Good luck Horatio Yes I tried on different days to do the same thing and varied the sequence of when I insterted the usb drive. I tried another socket at the front this time and with a usb stick instead and it wouldn't see that either. Does there have to be a backup file on the stick for the stick to be seen? I tried Acronis and it sees my external drive and backs up much faster. Maybe Microsoft decided it didn't want to steal the thunder of Acronis and Symantec and didn't put too much effort into making Windows 7 imaging work well.

Hi, Could you please check the following newsgroup posts for your answer. The posts lists different scenarios that might work for you. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsbackup/thread/9a082b90-bd7c-46f8-9eb3-9581f9d5efdd http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsbackup/thread/11d8c552-a841-49ac-ab2e-445e6f95e704 http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsbackup/thread/9a082b90-bd7c-46f8-9eb3-9581f9d5efdd Best Regards, Kim Zhou Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. Thanks for sending me these links and I will check them out. I think I came across most of the answer on the following link although doubts are raised: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/windows-7-restore-from-image-wont-recognize/ce8e3d0a-236d-4eff-8370-c171d2dfa555?tm=1333929198413&page=1#footer Basically, I should have had three files on the external drive as follows: a. A file named: MediaID.bin b. A file that has the same named as your computer name (this is where the .zip files are located). c. The 'System Image' folder named 'WindowsImageBackup'. By moving my backups into a folder out of the way and doing a fresh backup I prevented some confusion in the system. After this I could at last see the external drive and backup when doing a system image recovery. But how is it be possible to store more than one backup of hard drives on an external disk? The only way I know is by moving backups in and out of a folder which will take ages to do. Maybe I can rename the unused backups but this will get confusing because there are thee files to a backup and I think files are overwritten when doing backups if left in the route of the external drive. I is too easy to overwrite a backup of another drive by accident.

Hi, Could you please check the following newsgroup posts for your answer. The posts lists different scenarios that might work for you. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsbackup/thread/9a082b90-bd7c-46f8-9eb3-9581f9d5efdd http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsbackup/thread/11d8c552-a841-49ac-ab2e-445e6f95e704 http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsbackup/thread/9a082b90-bd7c-46f8-9eb3-9581f9d5efdd Best Regards, Kim Zhou Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. Thanks for sending me these links and I will check them out. I think I came across most of the answer on the following link although doubts are raised: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/windows-7-restore-from-image-wont-recognize/ce8e3d0a-236d-4eff-8370-c171d2dfa555?tm=1333929198413&page=1#footer Basically, I should have had three files on the external drive as follows: a. A file named: MediaID.bin b. A file that has the same named as your computer name (this is where the .zip files are located). c. The 'System Image' folder named 'WindowsImageBackup'. By moving my backups into a folder out of the way and doing a fresh backup I prevented some confusion in the system. After this I could at last see the external drive and backup when doing a system image recovery. But how is it be possible to store more than one backup of hard drives on an external disk? The only way I know is by moving backups in and out of a folder which will take ages to do. Maybe I can rename the unused backups but this will get confusing because there are thee files to a backup and I think files are overwritten when doing backups if left in the route of the external drive. I is too easy to overwrite a backup of another drive by accident.

Hi, We can back up non-critical volume while creating System Image backup. For reference: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Back-up-your-programs-system-settings-and-files Best Regards, Kim ZhouPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi The link shows how to manually create a system image. My point is that the procedure does not allow you to select a folder on a drive to send the image. You only get a selection of drive. Neither can you give the image a useful name to help you identify it later on from other system images. It can only be called WindowsImageBackup. I have several hard disks that are fitted into a SATA swap bay. Unless I have misread the article I cannot see how the Microsoft Image Backup can help me. Please let me know if I am missing something though because that is really easy for me to do.

Windows cannot find a system image on this computer. Any of these 5 things cause this error message or prevent Windows System Images from being found after you have booted into the Windows Recovery CD. . 1. Make sure the folder named "WindowsImageBackup" is still in the root of the USB drive where it was originally created. Like g:\WindowsImageBackup . 2. make sure the folder for each computer image is still the system name of the PC, the way it was originally created. If you rename a folder the image (and other images on the same drive) will not be found. So the full path will be like g:\WindowsImageBackup\your-pc . 3. make sure you haven't added any other folders in the "WindowsImageBackup" folder unless they are disk images of other computers. Any other folder (like an empty folder) that is aphabetically ahead of a Windows Image Folder will prevent all alphabetically trailing System Images from being found. . 4. If you have multiple system images on one USB drive and rename the mediaID file on any of the images, thenall images alphabetically trailng the one with the renamed mediaID file will not be found. . 5. USB Flash Drive For some reason, Flash drives don't seem to work for making or recovering from an image withWindows imaging but you can use Acronis True Image Home 2012 to recover a Windows System Image that has been copied to a Flash Drive. . If nothing above works, you may have a corrupt mediaId file. Download Acronis which will allow you to recover the Windows System Image 1 partition at a time directly from the .vhd files in your WindowsImageBackup folder. Use Acronis to recover the 100M reserved partition first, then drive c:\ etc. This works well for recovering to the original partitioned hard drive but not to a blank hard drive. The BOOTMGR is missing on startup when I try restoring to a new hard drive. When this happens, the usual tools for fixing the BOOTMGR have not worked for me. The recovery boot disk that you can create from the free 30 day free trial version of Acronis Home 2012 works for recovering partitions from a Windows System Image. If you benefit from using Acronis, you should probably buy it for $49.00. When using Acronis to recover partitions its confusing because the drive letters for the partitions are not displayed correctly in the Acronis interface . . so you have to identify the target partitions by knowing their sizes which are displayed. This happens because the 100M reserved is displayed with a drive letter in Acronis, but of course it does not have a drive letter in Windows.

Windows cannot find a system image on this computer. Any of these 5 things cause this error message or prevent Windows System Images from being found after you have booted into the Windows Recovery CD. . 1. Make sure the folder named "WindowsImageBackup" is still in the root of the USB drive where it was originally created. Like g:\WindowsImageBackup . 2. make sure the folder for each computer image is still the system name of the PC, the way it was originally created. If you rename a folder the image (and other images on the same drive) will not be found. So the full path will be like g:\WindowsImageBackup\your-pc . 3. make sure you haven't added any other folders in the "WindowsImageBackup" folder unless they are disk images of other computers. Any other folder (like an empty folder) that is aphabetically ahead of a Windows Image Folder will prevent all alphabetically trailing System Images from being found. . 4. If you have multiple system images on one USB drive and rename the mediaID file on any of the images, then all images alphabetically trailng the one with the renamed mediaID file will not be found. . 5. USB Flash Drive For some reason, Flash drives don't seem to work for making or recovering from an image with Windows imaging but you can use Acronis True Image Home 2012 to recover a Windows System Image that has been copied to a Flash Drive. . If nothing above works, you may have a corrupt mediaId file. Download Acronis Home 2012 which will allow you to recover the Windows System Image 1 partition at a time directly from the .vhd files in your WindowsImageBackup folder. Use Acronis to recover the 100M reserved partition first, then drive c:\ etc. This works well for recovering to the original partitioned hard drive but not to a blank hard drive. The BOOTMGR is missing on startup when I try restoring to a new hard drive. When this happens, the usual tools for fixing the BOOTMGR have not worked for me. The recovery boot disk that you can create from the free 30 day free trial version of Acronis Home 2012 works for recovering partitions from a Windows System Image. If you benefit from using Acronis, you should probably buy it for $49.00. When using Acronis to recover partitions its confusing because the drive letters for the partitions are not displayed correctly in the Acronis interface . . so you have to identify the target partitions by knowing their sizes which are displayed. This happens because the 100M reserved is displayed with a drive letter in Acronis, but of course it does not have a drive letter in Windows.

Windows cannot find a system image on this computer Every time I have had this problem I found that I had caused the problem. But now I have 12 images from 12 computers all listed after booting into Windows Image Recovery on any computer If you get this message when trying to restore an image stored stored on a USB drive. Check these items . . all of these 3 things cause the error message above. - 1. Make sure the folder named "WindowsImageBackup" is still in the root of the USB drive where it was originally created. - 2. make sure the folder for the image is still the name of the PC, the way it was originally created. If you rename it for any reason you will get the error. - 3. make sure you haven't added any other folders in the "WindowsImageBackup" folder unless they are disk images of other computers. Any other folder (like an empty folder) that is aphabetically ahead of the image folder will cause this error message. - If you still get this error message after checking these items, format another USB drive and copy your disk image to the new drive using the correct folder names. If you don't have another USB drive, copy the image to a pc, format the USB drive and copy the image back to the newly formatted USB drive using the correct folder names described above \windowsimagebackup\your-computers-name For some reason, Flash drives dont' seem to work for making or recovering from an image, even if you copy the image to the Flash Drive from another drive.

Windows cannot find a system image on this computer After troubleshooting the message above, Windows Image Recovery now lists 12 system images for 12 computers on the USB drive I use for Windows System Images. If you get this error message when trying to restore a Windows System Image from a USB drive, or if some images are listed and others are missing . . . . Check these items . . all of these 4 things cause the error message, or prevent Images from being found. . 1. Make sure the folder named "WindowsImageBackup" is still in the root of the USB drive where it was originally created. Like g:\WindowsImageBackup . 2. make sure the folder for each image is still the name of the PC, the way it was originally created. If you rename the folder the image will not be found. Like g:\WindowsImageBackup\your-pc . 3. make sure you haven't added any other folders in the "WindowsImageBackup" folder unless they are disk images of other computers. Any other folder (like an empty folder) that is aphabetically ahead of a Windows Image Folder will prevent all alphabetically trailing System Images from being found. . 4. If you have multiple system images on one USB drive and rename the mediaID file on any of the images, then all images alphabetically traiing the one with the renamed mediaID file will not be found. (renaming folders and files is a normal practice for keeping multiple versions of some things, but it prevents Windows Image Recovery from finding System Images.) . If you still get this error message after checking these items, format another USB drive and copy your disk image to the new drive using the correct folder names. If you don't have another USB drive, copy the image to a pc, format the USB drive and copy the image back to the newly formatted USB drive using the correct folder names described above like f:\windowsimagebackup\your-computers-name. For some reason, Flash drives don't seem to work for making or recovering from an image, even if you copy the image to the Flash Drive from another drive. . Acronis True Image Home 2012 can recover your system from a Windows System Image stored on a Flash Drive. I haven't tried creating an Acronis Image on a Flash Drive. . If nothing works, download Acronis which will allow you to recover the Windows System Image 1 partition at a time. Each Partition is stored as a .vhd file in your Windows System Image folder. This works well for recovering to the original hard drive. I have not been able to make Acronis work for recovering a Windows image to a blank hard drive. The BOOTMGR is missing on startup when I try restoring to a new hard drive. Use Acronis to recover the 100M reserved partition first, then drive c:\ etc. The recovery boot disk that you can create from the free 30 day trial version of Acronis Home 2012 works for recovering partitions from a Windows System Image. If you benefit from using Acronis, you should probably buy it for $49.00.

Windows cannot find a system image on this computer First, you can store images from multiple systems on a single USB drive . . as many as will fit on the drive. All images should be listed when you boot into the recovery disk. You select the image for the computer you are trying to restore. If you get the error message above when trying to restore a Windows System Image from a USB drive, or if some images are listed and others are missing . . . . Check these items . . all of these 4 things cause the error message, or prevent Images from being found. . 1. Make sure the folder named "WindowsImageBackup" is still in the root of the USB drive where it was originally created. Like g:\WindowsImageBackup . 2. make sure the folder for each image is still the name of the PC, the way it was originally created. If you rename the folder the image will not be found. So the full path will be like g:\WindowsImageBackup\your-pc . 3. make sure you haven't added any other folders in the "WindowsImageBackup" folder unless they are disk images of other computers. Any other folder (like an empty folder) that is aphabetically ahead of a Windows Image Folder will prevent all alphabetically trailing System Images from being found. . 4. If you have multiple system images on one USB drive and rename the mediaID file on any of the images, then all images alphabetically trailng the one with the renamed mediaID file will not be found. (renaming folders and files is a normal practice for keeping multiple versions of some things, but it prevents Windows Image Recovery from finding System Images.) . If you still get this error message after checking these items, format another USB drive and copy your disk image to the new drive using the correct folder names. If you don't have another USB drive, copy the image to a pc, format the USB drive and copy the image back to the newly formatted USB drive using the correct folder names described above like f:\windowsimagebackup\your-computers-name. Flash Drive: For some reason, Flash drives don't seem to work for making or recovering from an image with Windows imaging but you can use Acronis True Image Home 2012 to recover a Windows System Image that has been copied to a Flash Drive. . If nothing above works, you probably have a corrupt mediaId file. Download Acronis which will allow you to recover the Windows System Image 1 partition at a time directly from the .vhd files in your WindowsImageBackup folder. Use Acronis to recover the 100M reserved partition first, then drive c:\ etc. This works well for recovering to the original partitioned hard drive but not to a blank hard drive. The BOOTMGR is missing on startup when I try restoring to a new hard drive. When this happens, the usual tools for fixing the BOOTMGR have not worked for me. The recovery boot disk that you can create from the free 30 day free trial version of Acronis Home 2012 works for recovering partitions from a Windows System Image. If you benefit from using Acronis, you should probably buy it for $49.00. When using Acronis to recover partitions, the drive letters on the target partitions are not displayed correctly in the Acronis interface. You have to identify the target partitions by knowing their sizes which are displayed. This happens because the 100M reserved is displayed with a drive letter in Acronis, but of course it does not have a drive letter in Windows.