I am attempting to backup a database from a SQL Server instance on one machine and restore it to another, and I am encountering the frequently discovered 'SQL Server cannot process this media family' error.

Each of my instances are SQL Server 2008, but with different patch levels
Restore: 10.0.2531.0
Backup: 10.0.1600.22 ((SQL_PreRelease).080709-1414 )

The restore DB is express. Not sure about the backup version. The backup version is on a virtual private server. The restore is on my development box.

When I restore to a different database on the source (backup) server, it restores fine.

Lots of stuff on google about this issue, some on stackoverflow about this issue, but nothing which is this exact situation.

Any thoughts? It should be straightforward to do a backup and restore from one machine to another (having done this thousands of times in with SQL 6.5,7,2000,2005).

Any ideas how to restore a database in this situation, which gives this error when attempting to restore?

PARTIAL RESOLUTION: When I restored to a different box, running SQL 2008 Express on Windows Server 2003, all worked well. It just wouldn't work on the Windows 7 box. Not sure why. If anyone else has a similar experience, please let me know (there are many similar issues in different forums out there).