If you recovered W10 using a disk image please check......

that your Windows Update history is intact and correctly displayed.

There seems to be a problem with W10 backup and restore that may involve two possible scenarios, although I can't say for certain at this time whether the second is a real issue or imagined.

The possible issues...

1/ On restore of an image, your Windows Update history is removed and wiped clean. The updates are still installed (if you look in "installed updates") but the history is gone. It may also say that you have never checked for updates. (curiously this is a common issue with some paid for backup software)

2/ I have a suspicion (and I could be wrong depending on the timeline I think happened) that a restored image is not picking up optional updates.

Why I think this...

I made an image backup that I think was prior to installing optional updates. I had to recover back to that image some time later and my update history was gone. A forced update check said no updates available. Problem 1 above is real, the second one, maybe !

I have never really checked if a re-imaged system maintained the Update history. The system I am currently on is a re-imaged 8.1 system upgraded to Windows 10 and it only shows the Windows 10 updates, all 3 of them.

I remember in Windows 7 when we used to Delete or Rename the SoftwareDistribution folder to try to repair Windows update and that would wipe out the history. It never caused a problem, but I believe Windows does go back and verifies all the prior updates are installed.

I have not yet tried the Windows 10 imaging ability but you might check the thread linked below to see if Badrobot knows, if he doesn't respond directly.

https://www.tenforums.com/general-dis...-win-10-a.html

Hi there.

I restored using Acronis -- this is simply a PHYSICAL SECTOR by SECTOR restore so as far as ACRONIS is concerned it's just restoring DATA - it neither knows nor cares what the file system is (or even what the OS is) if doing a physical sector by sector restore.

If doing a DATA restore then the underlying OS and File system is important - but when I Image a partition / HDD then the OS is irrelevant - and I can't see why I should LOSE any data when restoring. The whole point of a restore is that you have an exact copy of the HDD at the time you made the backup.

If you are using Windows tools to do your restore / imaging there could be all sorts of other software in there that might take account of the Windows OS and file system and it might try and do what it thinks are optimisations etc.

Personally I prefer an INDEPENDANT bootable stand alone recovery / backup program -- I've had problems in the past with the Windows built in imaging system.

Cheers
jimbo

Thanks guys...

I first encountered this issue with AOMEI backupper and W8.1, and latterly the beta version of Acronis TI2015. I must confess that I always always use Acronis (TI2014) and run it within Windows... and I've never had an issue.

I can see where you are coming from with using bootable media, particularly if you have encountered issues running from within Windows and so I will be making a backup using Acronis and this method.


So I should be OK using an older version of TI such as TI10 ?

I've never actually made an image this way but I will look at the options and see if sector by sector is included.

The Windows image utility does seem to have this glitch in W10 which needs fixing.

Thanks :)

That's good to know.

I ended up using TI2014 and home made bootable CDR to image W10. I didn't see a sector by sector in the old TI10. Anyhow, its running now and about half done by the looks of it. Backing the whole caboodle up as a test.

That's interesting and thanks for the confirmation. I wonder if the update history is handled a little like restore points which (as I understand) are non functional when a recovered image is used (thinking of Acronis).