BleepingComputer.com: Vista Backup and Restore issues

Yesterday I used Vista to back up my entire HD (about 60GB) to an external HD. Then I used the boot disc and completly wiped my HD. Now Vista won't restore anything... I've tried everything that I could find and now I am begging BC to help!

I'm running Vista Home Basic 32 with 80GB HD and 2GB RAM

This is the main error im getting...
 restore_error.jpg (23.69K)
Number of downloads: 35

Hi Pooh85,

I understand that you did a clean install of Vista, that the install worked, but the recovery of your Backup and Restore failed. Is that correct?

There's a bug in the Backup and Restore feature which is probably the cause of this. The only positive response I found to this was the following and I will give you the link for it so you can look at it yourself. I don't know if it will work, and I think you will have to think about the instructions, but it seemed to work for this one person who reported it. There are several other ideas which you can try, but they go back to 2007, and Microsoft should have a fix for this by now. There might be someone here who can give you a specific fix for this rather than this possible workaround. What I found was this:

[quote]Here is a work around for your problem. Download Winrar, goto the backup folder, select all and extract to a drive or folder of your chose. (remember that the files are ziped, so you will need space to make this work.) after you extract you will see all your info,files a programs, from there move them where that need to be. Hope this helps --- it's in the last post here: http://forums.cnet.com/5208-4_102-0.html?threadID=314005[/b]

Zllio

You got it... Clean install of Vista worked but Backup and Restore wont give me my crap back! I sorta tried to do that workaround you mentioned a couple different ways. First I highlighted and said extract all files (to the HD) for the 260 zipped folders I have. It went fast and seemed to work but only some stuff was there. The other way I tried was extracting 1 by 1 but it took FOREVER to get 40 zipped files done! I have 260 zipped files that all have a folder called "c" and inside those folders is my crap. If there is any one else out there that can help me I would really, really appreciate it and I'll love you forever!

Hi Pooh85,

Here's another link with the other information I mentioned: http://forums.techarena.in/windows-vista-p...ance/707653.htm

The following is in post 4, but the thread is all about this.

Quote

I don't really understand what that means... I only have one set of backed up files.

Hi Pooh85,

Like you, I think there is some simple solution to this if one can only locate it and I will continue to look. It's possible though, given the rate of success of my search so far, that copying a few RARs at a time, may peel away at the remaining 260 to such a degree, that they will be done before I can locate the simple solution. I don't much like giving you this particular answer and will continue looking for something else, but I'm still harboring a secret hope that someone else here can give you a better answer and let me off the hook.

For the future, I've seen Acronis recommended as the better choice for your backups and can recommend it.

Zllio

Thanks for all you've done so far Zillio! I have a confession to make... I havent been copying the RAR's becasue I'm hoping for an easy way and I'm afraid I'll alter it and it will never restore easily.

Could XP's restore possibly work to get my stuff back? If I put it on Vista maybe? Or partition my hd and put XP on the other side?

Pooh85, on Jan 18 2009, 06:34 AM, said:

I wouldn't risk it, it may corrupt the backup. Keep looking to see if you can resolve the problem.

Hi Jonmor,

Did you get your files back on your computer? I continued to look for this on the basis of your error and can safely say that anything associated with the error message you got, does not have to do with the Vista Backup and Recovery feature. I did a search at msdn and found the following, but I'm not sure if this is the same problem you had.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en...0-b25bfb9b7174/

That article was located in this search which has a lot more articles:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Search/en...covery&ac=3

Let me know if you found anything that worked? The top one of the above two links has one idea that worked, I'm just not sure if it would apply in your case.

Zllio