System Image Problem

fdegrove said:

.....
Sure. The system is a confused as we all are . LOL.

When looking at the disk management screenshots I see quite a few disk (external ?) with partitions marked as active. Why? Are these really bootable ? I doubt it.
.....
I'll dig my heels in further tomorrow, it's getting late and this is one big mess. No offense to anyone.

Thanks for taking a look, yes tomorrow is another day.

I'm not worried about the ext drives w/ Active - will eventually diskpart inactive those.

No offense given, no offence taken

Bill
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Nick,

please confirm the cabling and sata ports - I think this is how they should be, but doubt is raised by the way the ports are labeled

I also checked HP for a BIOS update

Speccy reports
BIOS

Brand: American Megatrends Inc.
Version: 5.08
Date: 7/21/2009

HP offers
IPIEL-LA3 Motherboard BIOS update resolves an issue with USB mass storage devices not being detected, and resolves an issue with BIOS recovery failing if card reader is attached.

File name	sp43102.exe
Released	Aug 3, 2009
Version	5.05
Fix and enhancements	Resolves an issue with USB mass storage devices not being detected. Updates the boot order to place Optical Drive before Hard Drive. Resolves an issue with Ultra Direct Memory Access (UDMA) memory cards being show incorrectly in Windows. Updates vBIOS to address HDMI issues. Updates processor thermal policy. Resolves an issue with BIOS recovery failing if card reader is attached.

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Do you recall where the 5.08 version came from? I know HP has some bloatware they call Software Assistence, but that never gave me anything worthwhile except a coupon for ink

Could you confirm that I am on the correct HP product page?
HP Software and Driver Downloads: HP Pavilion Elite e9110t CTO Desktop PC

edit: The description makes BIOS contender, the fixes and enhancements dance around HDD USB mass storage.
I'm not suggesting that you flash this BIOS .... yet - but I think it might be something to consider. If the 5.08 version is viable and you know where to get it again (just in case) then it's a no brainer.

I think I'm ready for a change - fdegrove suggested the active flags on the external drives might be playing havoc. If you're up for it, I'm willing to walk through the process. It's something that was going to be done anyway, after we got past this CRAZY Disk #issue.

If fdegrove is right ... I'm going to literally bang my head against a brick wall and hang my head in shame

Bill
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fdegrove said:

I was under the impression this was about a windows backup image, not a Macrium image.
Which is it?

The issue is with a Win10 System Image

Macrium came into play after Nick Clean installed Win10 to get a running system. I suggested he use Macrium to back up the Clean install in case further attempts to restore the System Image failed - which they did fail.

I thought out load about trying to Restore the System Image onto the Clean Install - Nick tried that and it failed. The Macrium backup was restored

In post# 90,, John Frederick posted some links with similar issues. I followed one to find the resolution they used. Macrium might be able to correct what ever is wrong with the System Image. It's a bit of slight-of-hand really

John Fredrick said:

Here's a a post from someone who reported similar problems (system image restore worked fine in Win 8.1, but fails in Win 10 with same error code: Solved 0x80070057 error at the end of system image restore - Windows 10 Forums.

I've tested this only as far as backing up the VHDs inside a System Image - the Restore will be on-the-job training

1. All VHDs in the System Image are mounted in File Explorer
   
   
2. A Macrium backup is separately created for each of the mounted VHD.
   Four VHDs in the System Image = four separate Macrium backups
   
   
3. A Macrium Rescue disc (CD is fine) is required for the restore process - so that needs to be created.
   
   
4. Boot to the Macrium Rescue disc
   
   
5. Wipe the drive that will receive the Macrium restore
   ** This step was included in the original solution because the drive needed to be GPT for UEFI. It might not be necessary in this case.
   
   
6. Restore the separate Macrium backups (I would start with the System Reserve partition, then the Windows partition)
   I think that's all that needs to be restored - the D: partition looks to be the HP Recovery partition, based on the 15 GB size and drive letter. Nick said he doesn't need that any more. It's probably HP OEM Vista + HP bloatware.
   
   
7. the final step is to use the Fix the MBR feature in Marcium

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fdegrove said:

Is the image stored in the recovery partition on drive C:\ as shown in the first image of disk management as per post #113 ?

No, the image is on one of Nick's external drives. I think he mentioned which one, but that's a good question.

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Typing that out and thinking about the partition schema, it occurred to me that the system was, and is still, configured with no System Reserve partition.

This is not the schema of a Clean Install - I don't have enough information on how the Macrium backups were created or how they were restored, So I can only guess that Something went wrong ... to paraphrase MS "error" message

Win10 had some install issues in the Tech Preview when SysRes was too small - MS made some changes to the install process a few times to accommodate the new SysRes requirements. I'm now wondering if those changes to the install process affect systems without SysRes partitions.

The error message "0x80070057: Parameter is incorrect" that Nick gets on many of the restore attempts indicates, to the best of my knowledge, corruption of the System Reserve.

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I think we all agree that the current Disk, cable, port, BIOS fiasco needs to be resolved.
I'm leaning towards flashing BIOS with the 5.05 version - holding off until Nick responds to my question about the 5.08 version on the system now.

You believe the Active flag on the other drives manifest the jumping drive # - I offered to walk through it with Nick earlier. That's easy to test and can be done before anything else.

If removing the Active flag from all drives except C: (we previously removed the Active glag from HP_Partition, beacuse it was the first Active partition) resolves the disk # changing based on what drive is connected, then I think it's time to try the Macrium magic trick. Nick has restored the System Image so many times, so many ways, that I'm convinced something about the image isn't quite right - could be in the XML, could be Win10 restore - no restore process using Windows native tools (on the install media, from within Windows....) has completed successfully

The VHD can be mounted and the data can be accessed / copied. Nick has a copy of his VHD user profile and he also copied the entire contents to a folder outside of the VHD.

If the Macrium prestidigitation fails to yield results, the only thing left is a bigger hammer.
Manually create the partition scheme for Win10, manually extract the data in the VHD containing C: (Nick tried this, but on a running system, we'll have to boot to the install media, mount the VHD, and Xcopy the tree to the HDD), bootfix, bootsect, reagentc?
- all of that is prone to error - Windows is fairly good at self healing, but that might be too many paper cuts

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This is more of a recap for fdegrove and for anyone trying to figure out what has been done and what I think are the next steps.

Frank, I appreciate your taking time to put another pair of eyes on this
- I'm going blind and my brain hurts

Nick, I appreciate your hanging in there with me as each side issue crops up.
- this should be a simple thing

This is a brain dump of information - there are no actionable items in this post

Bill
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fdegrove said:

What I'd like to know is this: with only the Samsung drive present, does the system boot correctly ?

Reason I ask is that when disk management shifts the order of the drives then this would suggest Windows uses the boot record of that drive to launch Windows from.

I'll need to take a closer look at the various screenshots but clearly something's not quite right.

There have been many attempts to boot with only the C: drive connected - it might have been done, not certain though - Nick will just have to do it and post a screen shot

This is about as close as we got, I think. DskMgmt from a boot with only C: and the Seagate external connected.

The Macrium backup (on the Seagate) was supposed to be taken after the Clean Win10 install, but something is not quite right with that. I think there was another failed attempt to Restore the System Image before the Macrium backup occurred.

Our daughter arrived from out of the States this morning - I won't be able to spend much time on this until next week. I will drop in every once and while to see if I can help. I have a plan - it's just not working as planned

Bill

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caddman6425 said:

I disconnected all drives, except the one that had the reflex Reflect image, and then reformatted c: and restored the reflex Reflect image, and all was fine with the world.



This machine is a HP- Pavillion e9110t, with lots of add ins.

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/k...40Sd8woqDPeLW6