System Image

Hi, forgive the very obvious question- how are you trying to do this?

Assuming you are using Backup and Restore (Windows 7) then as has been said many times, using this is not advised being a legacy and unmaintained feature. MS itself recommends the use of 3rd party tools.

The disk imaging program endlessly recommended by many here is Macrium Reflect (free/paid). Others include e.g. Aomei Backupper.

History: (so often omitted by posters):
- have you been able to do this successfully before?
- when was the last time?

Windows build number: the forum prompted you (twice) -


If VSS is not working, you will not be able to create a System Restore point. Please advise what happens when you try that.

VSS repair options:
a. Macrium reflect includes a VSS repair option from its GUI.
b. Tweaking.com's free repair tool includes a VSS repair option.

Note there is the option of using the bootable disk of these products, avoiding the VSS issue, however, I suggest you look into fixing that and running some other basic checks.

Hello @JonJon,

dalchina said:

Assuming you are using Backup and Restore (Windows 7) then as has been said many times, using this is not advised being a legacy and unmaintained feature. MS itself recommends the use of 3rd party tools.

Just to add a bit more information to the above . . .

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It is common knowledge that most of the time you can NOT trust ANY of the MS built-in Backup or Image facilities because they just do NOT work. The System Imaging facility is a deprecated feature which is NO longer being developed or updated [ it used the same executables in every version of W10 ]. Even MS say that the built-in System Imaging facility should NOT be used . . .

System Image Backup (SIB) Solution
We recommend that users use full-disk backup solutions from other vendors.

SOURCE: > Features Removed or Deprecated in Windows 10

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I hope this helps.