Windows 8 recovery image. Windows System Restore
Sometimes, due to the installation of a program, driver, or virus infection, Windows may begin to run slowly or stop working altogether. System Restore allows you to return your computer's system files and programs to the state they were in when they were working correctly, and avoid lengthy troubleshooting. It will not affect your documents, images and other data.
There are times when it is necessary to perform a system rollback - restoring the main system files from a “snapshot” of an earlier state - a restore point or OS image. With its help, you can return Windows to working condition, but at the same time, all programs recently installed on drive C (or any other, depending on which drive the backup will be carried out), programs, etc. will be deleted. It is quite possible that adjustments were made during this period.
If you can login
Rollback to the last point
If, after installing a new application or update, only part of the system stopped working for you (for example, some driver crashed or a problem occurred in the program), then you can restore to the last point when everything functioned without failures. Don't worry, your personal files will not be affected.
Attention!
The recovery process will not be able to be interrupted once it is started. It can only be canceled after the process is completed.
Once the process is complete, your computer will reboot and everything will be as before again.
If the system is damaged and does not work
Method 1: Use a restore point
If, after making any changes, you cannot log into the system, then in this case you need to rollback through backup mode. Usually, in such cases, the computer itself switches to the required mode. If this does not happen, then when starting the computer, press F8(or Shift+F8).
After this, the recovery process will begin and you can continue working on your computer.
Method 2: Backup from a bootable USB flash drive
Windows 8 and 8.1 OS allow you to create boot disk recovery regular means. It is a regular USB flash drive that boots into the Windows recovery environment (that is, limited diagnostic mode), which allows you to repair startup, file system or fix other problems that cause the OS to not boot or run with noticeable problems.
Backup can take quite a while for a long time, so be patient.
Thus, the OS family Microsoft Windows allow using standard (regular) tools to perform a complete backup and restore of operating systems from previously saved images. In this case, all user information will remain intact.
Hello friends! If you read various computer forums on the Internet, you can find one unsolvable problem. This problem will also not be solved for you in any computer service and will be offered to simply reinstall the operating system again. The problem is that Windows 7, 8.1, 10 have a built-in operating system backup tool, but in some cases this tool may not find the Windows backup image created (by itself) during recovery. As proof, I can give you my own article, written two years ago: “”, if you read the comments to it, you will understand everything, or maybe you yourself found yourself in a similar situation and did not find a way out of it.
Any user personal computer sooner or later decides to back up your operating system, I must say, this is very convenient, you install the operating system on your computer (on a new laptop it is already installed from the store), then install everything necessary programs, after that you create a backup image of Windows, if after a year the computer behaves unstable, you simply restore Windows from the backup and that’s it, now we come to the most important thing.
To create a backup copy of the operating system, many programs have been invented, both free and paid, for example:, Paragon Hard Disk Manager 15 Professional, but many users prefer the operating system backup tool built into Windows, with which you can also create backup copy OS and place it on a regular hard drive or portable USB hard drive. But it’s not always possible to restore from this backup, and here’s why.
- Note: Friends, in today’s article I propose to use the program to solve this problem Acronis True Image Home 2014, but not all users have this program, so I wrote two more articles, in the first I use the utility built into Windows, and in the second, the utility.
The point is that the backup tool built into Windows is particularly capricious. If you backed up the built-in Windows tool archiving, then after this it is undesirable to change the configuration of the hard drive (that is, divide it into additional partitions, change drive letters, etc.), it is also undesirable to touch the portable USB hard drive on which the backup copy is located, and in no case should you change the name of the folder ( WindowsImageBackup) in which the system archive is located or move it. Often these conditions are not met by users and when restoring they are greeted with the following message: “Windows cannot find the image on this computer.”
Accordingly, the user is faced with the question of how to restore the. Despite the apparent hopelessness of the situation, there is still a way out and this is what it is!
So, first, let's create a backup copy of the disk (C:) using the built-in archiving tool. Lenovo laptop G710 with UEFI BIOS and installed with Windows Store 8.1.
Laptop disk management
In this window we see that, in addition to the standard Disk 0 (1 TB capacity), the laptop is also connected to a portable USB hard drive, also with a capacity of 1 TB, and it is on it (on partition I:) that we will save a backup copy of the operating system Windows systems 8.1 (Drive C:).
Let's launch remedy withBack up your files using File History.
Click on the button System image backup.
In this window, the Windows 8.1 Backup Tool prompts you to save a system backup on a portable USB hard drive (partition ( I:)).
The built-in archiving tool automatically includes the following sections in the backup backup:
1. Hidden encrypted (EFI) system partition (volume 260 MB) without a letter containing files Windows boot 8.1.
2. Disk (C:) with installed Windows 8.1.
If you turn the scroll wheel down, you will see
that the backup will include another hidden partition without a letter, containing the Windows 8.1 recovery environment.
Note: In this screenshot we see three partitions of the laptop hard drive that will be included in the backup archive.
We also see the partition (I:) of the portable hard drive on which the archive will be saved.
In the “Confirm archiving parameters” window, we check whether we have configured everything correctly.
Click Archive and the archiving process will begin.
The creation process begins backup archive.
Archiving completed successfully.
After completing the archiving process, go to the portable USB hard drive, partition (I:) and see a folder with a newly created backup archive called WindowsImageBackup, this is it - Windows Backup Image.
Let's go to the archive WindowsImageBackup and find in it Backup folder, this folder contains three files with the VHDX extension, this format is used in various Microsoft virtualization solutions.
In simple words, a built-in backup tool, converted the drive (C:) with Windows 8.1 installed, as well as two hidden section- into virtual files hard drives VHD X.
The very first file VHD X contains the Windows 8.1 operating system, which can be determined by its large file size. The other two VHDX files contain respectively two hidden partitions, the first with the recovery environment, and the second with system boot files (Esp.vhdx). You can also connect any virtual disk to« Disk Management» and see its contents, not only that, you can even work with him.
Now let’s imagine a situation: half a year has passed and your laptop has stopped booting for some reason, you decide to restore your laptop from a previously created backup archive WindowsImageBackup using the built-in backup tool. We connected a portable USB hard drive to the laptop, then booted the laptop with the installation Windows flash drives 8.1, entered the recovery environment, selected in additional parameters« Restoring a system image» ,
and then you got this error
: "Windows can't find the image on this computer."»Friends, I want to tell you that there is no specific solution to this problem, and even if you remember that a month ago you transferred the folder with the WindowsImageBackup archive to another hard drive, and then put it back in its place, this will not help you. 99% of users in this case simply reinstall the operating system or return the laptop.
We will not reinstall Windows and will take the following steps.
We find another computer.
We connect our portable USB hard drive to it. Go to the folder WindowsImageBackup, find our virtual disk VHD X s Windows files 8.1.
We won’t touch the original, we copy the file to another folder and give it a different name, for example Windows 8.1.
In Disk Management select Action ->Attach a virtual hard disk.
Review.
Find our virtual disk Windows 8.1.vhdx, select it with the left mouse and click Open.
The virtual hard disk is attached in Disk Management and assigned a letter (H:).
Acronis True Image 2016
Getting started. Backup systems.
We uncheck all the boxes and mark only our connected virtual hard disk (H:).
At point Destination, Local storage, specify a portable USB hard drive to save the backup copy and press the button Archive.
The backup copy of the VHDX virtual disk in .TIB format of Acronis True Image 2016 is ready and is located in the G:\My backups\Windows8_OS (H) folder on a portable USB hard drive.
In Acronis True Image 2016 we create .
I want to restore the (C:) drive of my laptop from the backup we created.
Note: For the purity of the experiment, before the recovery process, I will completely remove the disk (C:) with Windows 8.1 installed from the laptop, and then restore from our backup using a bootable flash drive with the programAcronis. Naturally, you don’t have to do this, unless suddenly someone wants to quickly uninstall Windows on the command line.
Connecting to laptop bootable USB flash drive with Windows 8.1 and boot the laptop from it
When the initial window appears Windows installations 8.1 I press the combination Shift+F10 and the command line opens.
I enter the commands:
diskpart
lis dis (this command displays a list of all connected drives)
seldis 0 (I select Disk 0, since this is the main hard drive of the laptop, we are guided by the disk capacity of 1 TB))
lis par (I display a list of all partitions of Disk 0, we see that the fifth partition is just the drive (C:) with the installed operating system Windows 8.1)
sel par 5 (select section 5)
del par override (delete section 5)
That's it, drive (C:) has been deleted.
Now the laptop boots with error 0xc0000034 because the drive (C:) has been deleted.
To check, I'll boot from the AOMEI PE Builder Live CD. We see instead of a disk (C:) unallocated space. The boot environment assigned a letter(C:) to another section, but there is practically nothing on it either.
We connect a portable USB hard drive to the laptop and boot the laptop from an Acronis True Image bootable UEFI flash drive
Choose Recovery. Discs.
Review. We need to find the backup we created; it is located on one of the sections of the portable hard drive. USB drive. Full path: G:\My backups\Windows8_OS (H), but since Acronis True Image confuses drive letters in the boot environment, the letter may not be G: but completely different.
Expanding the item Computer.
Let's go to Local disk(L:), its volume matches the partition of the portable USB hard drive on which the backup copy we created is located.
Go to the folder My backups.
Go to the Windows8_OS (H) folder.
Marking the partition for recovery Windows8_OS (H).
We do not check the MBR option, since the hard drive of our laptop has a GPT partition style and the UEFI interface is enabled in the BIOS.
Click on the button New storage.
Mark the unallocated space 449.6 GB with the left mouse and click Accept.
Get started.
The process of restoring the laptop from the backup we created begins.
We reboot the laptop and the error comes out again, which meanswe restore the flown one Windows boot loader 8.1.
Restoring the Windows 8.1 bootloader
I connect a bootable USB flash drive with Windows 8.1 to the laptop and boot the laptop from it.
When the initial Windows 8.1 installation window appears, I press the combination Shift+F10 and the command line opens.
I enter the commands:
diskpart
list vol (this command displays a list of all partitions. We see that the partition with the Windows 8.1 operating system is assigned the letter C:)
exit (exit diskpart)
We enter a command that will completely overwrite the contents of the laptop's Windows 8.1 boot storage.
bcdboot.exe C:\Windows
The download files have been successfully created!
We reboot the laptop and finally Windows 8.1 loads!
There are two functions associated with system images. Firstly, they can be created, and secondly, they can be used to completely restore the system.
To create an image, you will have to visit the “File History” section in the Control Panel (Control Panel | File History). Please note that this is in the Control Panel, and not in the main Metro interface, “File History Settings”, so be careful when selecting the desired item in the search results on the start screen
In the “File History” window that opens, pay attention to the “Create a system image” link in the lower left corner. She opens the familiar “Create a System Image” wizard, in which everything remains the same.
To restore a system from an image - that is, to completely return it to a certain state– just connect external drive, where the image file is stored. Then go to PC Settings | Update and recovery | Recovery" and click the "Restart Now" button under "Advanced Startup". The computer will restart.
On the Choose an Option screen, select Troubleshoot. In the "Diagnostics" section, select " Additional options"(Advanced Options). On the Advanced Options screen, select System Image Recovery. The computer will reboot again.
On the System Image Restore screen, select your username and enter your password. The System Image Recovery Wizard will launch. On the first page, select the desired image, then click “Next” and follow all the instructions in the wizard to restore the system from the specified image.
Is this the best backup and restore method for Windows 8.1? No. But those who still want to use it can rejoice: it still works. And of course, this is very convenient if you have images of previous versions of Windows lying around.
In case of breakdown hard drive or another critical system failure, the System Image Restore tool is available on the Windows 8 recovery disk. Using this tool, you can restore Windows to its original state.
In order to restore Windows 8 from an image, you must
Please note.If the system image is recorded on several DVD discs, then recovery must begin from the disk that was last recorded. All information necessary for recovery and containing the Windows 8 recovery image is recorded on the last disk.
After installing the last disk into the drive, the data will be read from it and the “wizard” will display information about the Windows recovery image. To continue, click the “Next” button.
7. Depending on the specific situation, the system is restored to new hard disk or the old one - different options will be available. In the first option, the system will offer to format the HDD, in the second this step you can skip it.
Important so that the volume new hard disk, if there was a replacement, was greater than or equal to the old one. If in your system unit several HDDs, you need to choose which ones you want to exclude. To do this, click on the “Exclude drives” button and mark them.
When you click on the "Advanced Options" button, a dialog box will appear with two additional options. You can check the disks for errors that may have occurred during the recovery process, or select automatic reboot. If additional options are not available, click on the “Install drivers” button. When you complete the settings, click “Next” to continue.
8. Then insert the first DVD you burned from Windows image 8 and click “OK”, the unzipping process will begin.
9. The progress indicator will inform you about the progress of the recovery. This can take a few minutes or several hours, it all depends on the amount of information. When the first disk is processed, the system will prompt you to insert the next one. This will continue until the work with the last one is completed.
At the end of the process Windows recovery 8 of the image will be completed.
The initial view of the system will become available after restarting the computer.
