If I create a custom refresh image such as a blank retail windows 8 will it restore my files. I'm trying to go from wim 8.1 pro wmc to pro because it is not activated and I have a pro product key. Is there any way to downgrade without losing files settings etc.
What i mean is can I reinstall windows 8 pro (I currently have media center) without losing eveything?
I have read the tutorial (Refresh Windows 8 - Create and Use Custom Recovery Image) . Would I not get the same result if I created a Disk and Partition Backup using a program like Acronis or Easeus? That way I hope to keep all my initial system, personal files and third party applications.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI created a custom refresh image the day before upgrading to 8.1. I am having shut down and sleep issues with windows 8.1 that I don't have time to troubleshoot any longer and I wish to go back to win 8 for now. I went to check that my image was there and active and this is what i get:
It showed successful when I created it? I can find in in the location that is it supposed to be:
and:
Now I'm stuck. I don't want to use the factory image and reinstall everything, and I can't cope with the bsods and hangs when trying to sleep or shutdown ( I have tried every option in that massive thread about windows 8.1 not sleeping ) ...
I have a Lenovo G585 laptop that I installed with Linux (tried dual boot) and accidentally wiped out the Windows 8.1 restore partition. Now I want to restore it to Windows. I also have a Dell desktop Windows 8.1 that I can use to to create a USB restore image, can I use a restore image from a desktop to fix a laptop?
View 2 Replies View RelatedWhen I entered recimg/show current in elevated cmd , I get the message : There is no active custom recovery image.
However when I checked disk management , I get the following partitions:
EFI System 50mb
OEM 40mb
Recovery Partition 2GB
OS C 50.12Gb
Recovery Partition 5.42Gb
What are in those 2 Recovery Partitions ? Are they the 2 restore points I created? Why is the second Recovery Partition so much larger than the first?
I installed Windows 8 Through my windows DVD and now want to make it so I don't need the Windows Installation Disk or any USB Recovery key. Is there any way to make a refresh AND reset partition and image.
View 7 Replies View RelatedAm using recimg to create custom image on freshly upgraded win 8.1 install. It fails almost immediately with this message appearing in a pop up:
"The procedure entry point ??0BufferedStream@UnBCL@@QEAA@PEAVStream@1@K@Z could not be located in the dynamic link library c:windowssystem32migwizmigcore.dll"
Further info:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: recimg.exe
Application Version: 6.3.9600.16412
Application Timestamp: 5243fc60
Fault Module Name: KERNELBASE.dll
[Code] ........
System info :
OS Name Microsoft Windows 8.1
Version 6.3.9600 Build 9600
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name TOSHIBA
[Code] .....
While creating custom system image, I accidently registers the custom system image as default image when refreshing Windows 8 instead the OEM one. So, how do I unregister the custom system image and make the OEM system image as the default one?
View 3 Replies View RelatedI've got a problem with Windows 8.1 Single Language Edition 64-bit (English/Russian/Ukrainian).
When Windows 8 updated to 8.1 last year through the Store, I lost the ability to Restore and Refresh (a feature I had used several times previously).
Since then I have been using the same installation of 8.1, and it has finally become too laggy and bloated and I need desperately to Restore (files are all backed up and removed from computer, ready for Restore).
Things I have tried already:
- Found my Product Key using a keyfind program. My version of 8.1 came preintalled on the laptop, no DVD case, or e-mails with Key.
- Made a recovery USB Flash Drive (my laptop doesn't have a DVD drive). Recovery drive works when I boot from BIOS, but says it is invalid when I try to Restore.
- Tried to download an official ISO file from Microsoft, but the site says my Product Key is invalid (its not invalid).
- Tried using the Enterprise Trial ISO to Restore, and am now stuck with an expired trial copy of Enterprise.
I still have the Recovery Partition, and didn't delete it when I made the Recovery USB.
My computer is an ASUS Zenbook prime UX31A. All I want is to Restore. Even if its back to Win 8. I do not understand why all options seem to be broken since the update to 8.1. It seems intentional.
I want to Restore legitimately, and use the product I bought legitimately. But if this continues I may have to seek "alternatives".
Since in installed windows 8 updates yesterday I have been put into a temporary profile when I login to my machine.
i have tried to resolve this using safe mode, system restore, refresh pc and automatic repair.
however I keep being put into a temporary profile as none of these have worked.
how can I sort this out?
Just recently I was using my computer when an error appeared saying I had a drive error that needed to be fixed. I clicked the error in the system tray and then the computer restarted in order to fix the drive error. Well, I went into an "automatic repair" but then it froze on the "select your keyboard layout" screen. I then tried the "refresh your PC" option, but it wouldn't work saying that the hard drive was locked. I then tried to restore the PC to a restore point but it wouldn't let me do that either. As a last ditch resort I tried to use the "reset your PC" option which I gather is just a guided reformatting of the hard drive but it wouldn't let me do that either, saying that the required partition wasn't there. I took it into a PC repair place and they said the hard drive needs to be wiped, that the registry is corrupted or something along those lines. When booting from the windows 8 CD I tried to go into the installation menu and it won't even accept the product key on my package.
All I can really access is the command prompt. I guess I just need to reformat the hard drive and perform a clean install of windows. How to do this reformatting? I've never done it before and don't want to screw it up. I'm not worried about saving data on the computer, nothing really important on the drive that isn't already backed up on my laptop.
I have an infected laptop. It has Windows 8 installed.
The problem I'm having is that NO programs will execute, I cannot load "Change PC Settings" so I can't refresh, reset or restore Windows. I have tried the method of holding down SHIFT and restart but to no avail.
I can't load programs from usb/cd before boot but I can in legacy mode and not uefi (not sure what difference that makes).
I have successfully scanned with Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 in legacy mode but it found nothing? I've also manage to scan again using legacy mode with Malwarebytes but nothing.
I also cant load up the Control Panel, it loads but no icons are showing. Command prompt I can load but not in Administrator.
I have made a System Image & a Custom Recovery Image on my Asus Vivotab but I cannot get the system to recognize them on a USB Hard Drive.
I got into this by testing the Refresh Custom Recovery Image. The system did not find the image as the system allocated a different drive letter so I have basic Refresh. I have found my way to the Administrator Command but cannot find RECIMG on either the x: or C: drives. Do I need a Path Command from System32?
I also have a System image on a USB Hard Drive but cannot get the system to find it. I have tried putting the files folders in the root directory but the system still does not recognise them.
A month back I accidentally deleted the wow6432 node from my registry under system_user. I believe this is the root of all my problems. Once I did that, my toshiba c885 D 64 bit would not boot. I forced the computer to shut down and pressed f12 to get to the system recovery options. I then restored to a point before my blunder. Well, my laptop worked for a while and then magically the screen goes black and will not reboot. I did sestem restore a few more times since I could get a little bit of work done in between restoring and the screen turning black again. After I was fed up with having to run system restore every other day, I decided to run system refresh to keep my files but reset everything else. After restoring I am getting the same problem and find myself again running system restore every other day just to keep working.
My questions are if I completely reinstall windows 8 and start from scratch, will this definitely solve the problem? I thought system refresh would have worked, so I'm not sure. Also, are there any other available options for me to fix my computer without starting from scratch?
I accidentally removed a usb cable from a powered usb hub , and a volume slider of some other program appeared superimposed and floating above my music making program , so I restarted the pc. From then on , it wouldn't start , and kept saying preparing automatic repair, then reached 40% and wouldn't go any further.
I unplugged my 2 external drives because they weren't showing in the bios , and plugged them into my laptop to check they were ok , and I am relieved to say they are.
Since i removed the drives , my desktop ( asus ) will eventually arrive at the blue recovery screen , but all these things that are supposed to fix it , aren't working.
When I try to refresh , it says the drive where windows is installed is locked. I've tried to do a system restore from 3 different restore points and none of them have worked ( one actually cited a mozilla profile as being the cause )
Re-image wont work because it cant find the image file , which is on one of my external drives which are now unplugged. Automatic repair diagnoses , but then says it cant repair. It also will not boot into safe mode.
I can use command prompt, and was hoping I could rename the system hive name , but the command prompt says
X=windowssystem32.
I've tried cd%windir%system32config , but it says " the drive , the path, or the filname is not valid" . I have successfully ran regedit from the command prompt .....
I had no reasons to expect anything untoward before yesterday. The automatic repair thing happened before , about 4 months ago , but i was always able to get out of it by switching it off at the wall. Now that doesnt work and its in an endless loop .
I have hirens bootcd but there are a lot of things on it that i dont know how to use. I was able to get mini xp working via hirens but couldn't access system restore.
Spoiler: Image custom without software for recovering windows system
Refresh your PC Windows 8 without affecting your files
To avoid that your applications installed from disks or web site will be deleted, you can create a custom image control reimg.exe
Captures a new recovery image customized to the location specified by <repertoire>, and is defined as active recovery image.
Type the command : recimg.exe /createimage c:ImageSys
To display the path to the directory in which the active recovery image is stored, type:
Recimg.exe /showcurrent
I have 2 hard drives in my computer, my main Windows 8 C:, and a win7/game/data drive, the second of which is failing. reports show it is failing a smart short test, and although it has been running fine for months, i figured i would replace it with my tax return.
My question: If i create a system image of C: and D:, would it be possible to just restore the D: portion of the image, or do I have to restore both, then delete the second C: on the new drive? i do not have the resources or courage to test this on my system now because I am not sure what this reformat, and with my luck, the drive would die during the restore.
I made a system image from Windows 8.1 using Windows' own system image feature. I seem to be unable to restore it. I booted with the Windows 8 disc, and told it to restore from a system image. It found the image, ran a few minutes, then failed because of version mismatch (?). Not before hosing the entire system, by the way. Luckily, I was well backed up.
I booted with the Windows 7 disc, and it didn't even see the system image (on my external HD). It saw my Windows 7 system image and restored it just fine, and here I am.
Anyway, is there some trick to restoring a Windows 8.1 system image? I am not running Windows 8.1, so I can't generate a repair disk that way. Is there one available online somewhere for download?
I have a brand new Asus laptop, bought it about 3 weeks ago. After installing some windows updates I restarted the computer and it it would not boot. Keep getting a quick error message 0xc0000001 and restarts. I have tried booting into recovery and doing automatic repair, tried bootrec's /fixboot, /fixmbr, and /rebuildbcd and and get successfully completed but still does not boot in both secure and non-secure boot. I have done a refresh, which completes successfully, but still not booting. The USERS folder in c:Windows.old does not show any users, even though when I click advanced options in recovery it asks to choose a login and enter a password. I have also checked the USERS folder at c: and :cwindows. Remember I did a refresh and not a reset so my pics should still be their. How can i recover my pics and fix the damn boot.
View 7 Replies View Relatedwhat do I do if the refresh install on Windows 8.1 says that I'm missing files?
I installed Windows 8 from a retail disc and upgraded to 8.1 via Windows Update. I can't use the Windows 8 disc, it says invalid media.
My windows 8 pro install messed up n i have almost 2.8tb of stuff on my drive on a 3tb hd. I have an identical hd as a backup which i have (an apparently successful) a backup of my system from a couple of weeks ago on. I had set the system to do scheduled backups of the system (set to backup a system image of efi partition and c. There were a few times where i was trying to get other things done and the systemwas running slow so i cancelled the backups when i noticed them running. The software stopped the backups (seemingly successfully).
As i say my system messed up - i came home to find out it was no longer downloading (as i had left it doing when i went to work) but was on a blue screen (bsod?) saying the system needs to be restarted. Since then it didnt work well at all and after dskchk reported that several sectors were damaged so it was moving data to spare sectors (or whatever it generally reports when this happens) there were a lot of files messed up or reported as deleted when doing a file recovery scan with recuvva.
So i decided to restore the backed up system image from the other hd. Incidentally i tried mounting the vhdx backup image from that hd via windows explorer which then reported "the disk needs formatting" and didnt get any success mounting via disk management either (it mounted in the app but didnt show up on windows explorer and if i tried to access info on it via disk management it reported the same"disk needs formatting prompt".
So when i booted my win 8 dvd it didnt work cos the dvd wasnt an efi booting version so i had to boot from a usb version with the efi bit included.
I formatted the system drive and chose to do an image restore. It started doing the restore (apparently) but every time i came back to it later i had the follwing error:
"Re-image your computer
The system image restore failed.
Error details: The requested system device cannot be identified due to multiple indistinguishable devices potentially matching the identification criteria Ox80073B92"
It took me so long to set up my system n i have a lot of my own data on there too. The system drive I formatted was created in diskpart and then re formatted with "format" command (as it created the disk in raw mode) so now it is ntfs mode (uncompressed).
How do you refresh files in 8.1 , If you got the upgrade over the net?
View 9 Replies View RelatedOn my friend's Dell Inspiron laptop, Windows 8 will not boot. I want to boot to the repair disk to restore an image I had created. F12 on boot does not show the DVD drive as an option. I went into Setup/Boot and disabled Secure Boot, still did not show the DVD as a boot option. I went back to Setup and selected Boot List Option>Legacy. Now it shows the DVD drive as an option to boot. I booted the repair dis, went through all the dialogs to select the image I had created, but when it goes to restore it it says it cannot because the image was made in UEFI, and it is now set for BIOS.
I went back into Setup/Boot and I see that the option Load Legacy Option ROM is now Enabled, it did it on its own. As a test I set it back to the defaults and re did it as above, and again it automatically changes Load Legacy Option ROM, which I assume is what is creating the problem.
So my question is what do I need to do to boot from the Windows Repair Disk?
I have a XPS 8500 with preinstalled windows 8. I tried to install Ubuntu 12.10 on it. When I partitioned the disk, I accidentally format the whole disk. Then I could not restart to Windows 8. I didn't make any backup or recovery media. How to restore factory image?
View 5 Replies View RelatedI recently did an update of my machine from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1. The update process did not show any errors or warnings and by the time it finished I was under the impression that everything went smooth.
After the update I was testing the environment and discovered that one of my desktop applications stopped working, I went to the developer's website and indeed I found there is a known issue with their software on 8.1 and to solve it, I had to completely uninstall the software and then install it once more. So I went to Programs and Features in order to do so and to my surprise the Uninstall button was missing from the interface. Right-clicking an item and selecting uninstall from the menu gives a warning message suggesting that the application might have already been uninstalled and asks if I wanted to remove the application from the Programs list. However, clicking OK or Cancel just closes the message box and nothing happens.
So I went and tried to Refresh My PC; Once I clicked Refresh My PC the verification process started and indeed it told my that some system files are missing and that it should take care of it provided I insert my Windows disc. Now since its an OTA update from Win 8 to 8.1 I thought that MS knows that some people will not have a physical copy of 8.1 and so I inserted my Windows 8 Pro System Builder disc hoping it would work, but sadly as you might have guessed, it did not. It told me that I needed the 8.1 recovery disc.
Now I have been looking everywhere for a recovery image to download and use to fix my problem, everywhere I go it suggests that I make my own copy. But how am I supposed to do that if my Windows is faulty and has missing files. I really don't wanna go back to Windows 8 and re-upgrade to 8.1. I have a monitored internet bandwidth and I cannot go and download the 3 GB 8.1 update once more.
How can I repair my 8.1 machine?
I came across this article describing how to get an ISO image for 8.1 with a Windows 8 product Key. However, entering my Windows 8 Pro System Builder (OEM) key in the box fails and tells me that the key I entered is not for this product.
Here is my situation:
-I have now installed and using two sata hard drive (Drive C "500GB" for OS and other programs and Drive D "1TB" for Games and other Documents)
-I also have SYSTEM IMAGE created before and saved it on my external hard drive.
Now I want to RESTORE that SYSTEM IMAGE saved on my external hard drive to the Drive C "500GB"
My asking is HOW TO DO IT CORRECTLY:
>Should I disconnect/unplug the SATA Cable for the Drive D 1TB before I proceed with the system image restore?
(By the way I have no problem with the procedures on how to do the system image restore)
>OR is there a RISK if I just continue with the system image restore with both SATA CABLES for both HDD not removed?
While trying to restore from an image, I get an error:
The system image restore failed.
Error details: The specified list of volumes to recover contains duplicates. (0x80780088)
I'm trying to recover windows 8.1 x64.
I have 10 computers with identical hardware that all have their own oem license. What I want is to have the same setup on all 10 computers. What I remember from previous Windows versions is that you had to activate Windows individually with its own oem key for every computer you restored with a preferred disk image. From what I read the product key procedure is a bit different in Windows 8 and that the key is stored in the bios? The activation should also be handled automatically by Windows, is that correct?
So what I really wonder is: Do I still have to activate every restored pc manually or will Windos 8 do this for me?
A second related question: Are there any imaging/cloning software that can be set up to promt me for a new computer name in the restore process?
I am thinking of installing a new hard drive to my Dell XPS 8500 (replacing the one that came with my system).
I have made DVD's that will install the factory image using Dell backup. If I install a new hard drive can I use these DVD's to install Windows 8 (the factory image) to my new hard drive?
Although I have been able to make a full disk image using the built in "system image" option, I can not find any way to restore it. The recovery options only point to system restore and refresh PC. I'm navigating to <control panel> and then <file history> to access the recovery options. I can not find any restore from system image option anywhere.
Am I missing something, or is it deliberately missing in the Enterprise editions ? If so is there any way I can restore the backup image ?
I have created two disk images. I deleted the first one but in the restore point pop up the title is still here (but is empty!!! The red one.) How can delete it????
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