Hi I've done a backup of vista ultimate 32bit on my usb hard drive, fitted new internal hard drive, tried to restore complete pc backup from hard drive but vista recovery console won't find image, I used vista install dvd, any ideas why it won't find image all works I know image there as I've got xp on other partition and can see backup.

It may be that the windows recovery environment is not seeing the usb drive. If you go into the windows command prompt can you access the drive from there?

If not, then it could be that you need to load the USB drivers so that it can access the USB external drive. I am little surprised that this would be the case but you never know. I found some generic usb drivers here:

http://www.usbnews.com/news/drivers%20for%...0enclosures.htm