Macrium Image Failure - Error Code 6

cereberus said:

Have you tried my suggestion?

Hi there
Some people just don't listen !!!!

IMO whatever stage of I.T skill you are at - and whether you want to learn from basics upwards -- surely it's best to have a WORKING system first -- then back that up and then mess around to hearts content.

Also if one wants to "replicate the error" - just clone the wretched thing first, then apply the sensible method to get system working -- back that up and then restore the "bust image" to do your testing !!!

Personally if I'm flying planes I'd rather fix any defect while the thing is on the ground rather than doing it while flying !!!!!

Cheers
jimbo

cereberus said:

There is a much easier way to solve your problem.

Boot from Reflect in Winpe mode and click link "fix windows boot problems".

This will delete the corrupt bcd and rebuild it from scratch.

The Macrium support chose not to use Macrium fix windows boot problems.

Cluster Run Error - While gathering windows events creating image.

They chose to label the partition followed by chkdsk fix.

It's useful to have multiple repair methods.

If LaurieD227 wants to try it it's ok.

A third method is to use command line to format and recreate the system partition.

cereberus said:

Have you tried my suggestion?

cereberus - Not yet, but I have it noted as my backup plan, and I appreciate you pointing it out for me.

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
Some people just don't listen !!!!


Personally if I'm flying planes I'd rather fix any defect while the thing is on the ground rather than doing it while flying !!!!!

Cheers
jimbo

Jimbo -

Thank you for your recommendations. I appreciate your input and your willingness to take an interest.

Regarding cereberus' suggestion, as I mentioned to him in a much earlier post and above, I really appreciate his suggestion. I have made a note of it and it is my contingency plan. I fully intend to try it if and when I need to.

This situation began when I tried to create a Macrium image of this system and it failed; all the subsequent work has been about solving the failure so I could get to a working system and make an image of that. I was able to make a Windows System image that I assume includes the error, so I have sort of done what you suggest. I hadn't planned this as a learning experience, but am trying to make it beneficial as I go through it.

What you also may not be aware of is the fact that this is not my only - nor my primary - laptop. I actually have other working systems available to me, so I have the luxury of taking the time to mess around with this one while continuing to "fly" the other ones.

I'm sorry if it seems annoying, but zbook's methodical approach is working for me. My only concern would be if it seems like I'm taking advantage in some way, because I really value the patience and kindness you folks in this forum show me every time I come here for help.

- - - Updated - - -

zbook said:

The event viewer report is likely an external drive.
Notations for drives are often inconsistent so all drives are tested.
The text report results and Dell diagnostics look good.


These commands will identify the EFI (system partition) and label it with the letter W:

Code:

diskpart
lis dis
lis vol
sel dis 0
det dis
lis par
sel par 1
det par
assign letter=w
lis par
sel par 1
det par
exit

chkdsk /r /v W:

Once it is labeled run chkdsk /r /v W:
The drive partition is < 1 GB so chkdsk should be quick.

Use the information in this link to find the chkdsk report in the event viewer.
Copy and paste into notepad > save to desktop > post into the thread using a one drive, drop box, or google drive share link:
Read Chkdsk Log in Event Viewer in Windows 10 Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials
Read Chkdsk Log in Event Viewer in Windows 10


Then see if Macrium will run after the chkdsk fix and recover.

Once the Macrium backup works there will be one more step to remove the assigned drive letter.

Got it - will do it and let you all know what happens. Thanks!

Also, thanks for the Macrium link - when I was searching, I searched on Error Code 6 so I didn't find this thread. It looks like my exact issue, so it's really helpful.

- - - Updated - - -

Here's the update.

1) I was able to give the system partition the W drive name letter, and I was able to run the "chkdsk /r /v W:" command. But a couple odd things happened along the way.
--as expected, I had to say "yes" to dismounting the volume (so far so good)
--When it got to \EFI\dell\logs, it found an unrecoverable error, and when it stopped and asked "convert folder to file" I said yes. (Sorry if I should have said no - I took a guess)


--Once I did so, it continued until it got to File and Folder Verification Complete. At this point it asked "convert lost chains to files?" and I answered yes once again.


2) I went to Event Viewer, and that's when the next weird thing happened. No Chkdsk or Wininit logs from today show up in Event Viewer. When I filtered the Application logs for both sources, I got logs of each type through 3pm or so yesterday but nothing from today. I tried Power Shell just in case, but it couldn't retrieve anything from today.

One thing I found in Event Viewer is a bunch of "logging/recovery" errors that I have no idea how to interpret or fix, but the time stamps look like they match the time frames of the chkdsk runs.

Unfortunately, I closed the Command Prompt window before checking to confirm that the log from the repair run had posted in Event Viewer - the best I have are a few screen shots I took at various points in time. So, I went back and re-ran the "chkdsk /r /v W:" command, and did a copy/paste as a text file. (Sorry, best I could think of to do.)

3) I checked the partition using Macrium's "check file system" and it found no errors, so I tried to run an image. It got past the previous failure point, but another weird thing happened. I got a catastrophic failure as shown in this snip:


I cancelled the image, went looking in Event Viewer and saw VSS errors at the corresponding time, but since I don't know what they mean or how to fix them I finally closed everything and restarted the laptop. Once it was back up, I reran Macrium; it created an image with no more issues (I ran "Verify Image" after it was complete just to double check).

4) In Event Viewer, I also saw a couple of errors that referred to "The required buffer size is greater than the buffer size passed to the Collect function" so I'm wondering if that might be related to why the latest log data didn't show up there. But since I've almost never worked with Event Viewer items before, I could be totally off base.

5) Regarding the folder that was converted to a file, and the lost chains that were converted to files, I think I can get access to the contents on the W partition and try to find them - if I need to. (I have no idea what needs to be done about these if anything.)

So - next steps?

The chkdsk fragments are not needed.

They may be able to be seen by a right click explore using Mini tool partition wizard:

Launch the tool > highlight the ESP or system partition or partition 1 for disk 1 > right click explore > expand all rows > post an image into the thread

With a backup image you can remove the assigned drive letter.
Open administrative command prompt and type or copy and paste:

Code:

diskpart
lis dis
lis vol
sel dis 0
det dis
lis par
sel par 1
det par
remove letter=w
lis par
sel par 1
det par
exit

zbook said:

The chkdsk fragments are not needed.

They may be able to be seen by a right click explore using Mini tool partition wizard:

Launch the tool > highlight the ESP or system partition or partition 1 for disk 1 > right click explore > expand all rows > post an image into the thread

[/CODE]

Okay, I went into MiniTool, picked Explore, and expanded every single row - it took 10 screen shots to capture them all. A bunch of them looked like they just pertained to various languages, so I collapsed those and captured the rest in the snips below.



If I need to post the full set of rows, let me know.

The chkdsk fragments are located in the folder: FOUND.000 (see right lower corner)

zbook said:

The chkdsk fragments are located in the folder: FOUND.000 (see right lower corner)

That makes sense. I just have a couple more questions:
--Am I correct that I don't need to retrieve or save the fragments?
--Do you have any idea what might have caused the Macrium catastrophic failure that happened when I tried to run the image before doing a restart? Also, since Macrium ran fine once I restarted, and the image appears to be good, am I safe to ignore that failure?

Often the cause of failures remains undetermined.

What we know is that there was drive file system (FAT32) corruption in the EFI (system partition).
This was fixed running chkdsk.

Much more common is drive file system corruption (NTFS) in the C: (primary partition).

There are some computers that have problems during Windows upgrades.
They may display "we couldn't upgrade the system reserved partition"
In these computers you can delete unneeded files in the EFI partition or modify the size of the partition.

So at this time the troubleshooting has completed.

In case you want to delete the chk files they can be deleted.

The Windows logs can be rescanned with the V2 log collector to see if there are any reported Macrium problems.

That's great news.
You're very welcome.