How can I tell System Restore in WIndows 7 recovery console to use my recovered backup drive's restore point data?
- by Rich Shealer
My Windows 7 desktop PC failed to boot. It would get to a grayish screen with a mouse and would only respond to the power button. After much examination I found that the problem was not a failed drive as running CHKDSK from the Recovery Console on my main drives passed without any errors.
I had been installing various Java version in the days before the failure so I decided to use a restore point to roll backwards.
I have an external SATA drive controller with two 2 TB drives mirrored using the Windows mirroring function. My system has been backing up to this drive regularly. The problem is I accidently broke the mirror when testing to see if this drive system might have been causing my boot issue.
Connecting it to another machine showed two dynamic drives that were invalid. In the end I reformatted one as an NTFS basic disc and used recovery software on the other to copy all of the files to the reformatted drive.
I had to copy the restore points into the new drive's System Volume Information folder by granting rights to that user.
I moved the drive back to the original machine and rebooted. I can see my new drive, it even uses the same drive letter as it did in normal mode.
Running System Restore it lists a new Automatic Restore point created while sitting at the RC along with all of my backups. Selecting the backup I want (or any other) I get a dialog.
The backup drive could not be found. System Restore is looking for restore points on your backup. Make sure the backup drive is on and connected to this computer and then click OK.
What do I need to do to allow system restore to see the restore points?