Restore Partition failed

witty

I backed up a Win10 System Partition on my dual boot system and restored it to the same harddisk (partition location changed).

It successfully boots, but I do not see any login, but only a black screen with the mouse-pointer visible.

the "funny" part is, that obviously the system is kind of running in the background, as I even can connect via teamviewer (well, I also only see the black screen with the mousepointer in the remote session), but this proves, that network and even teamviewer-service is running...

any idea, what I can do?

vbbritt

Did you boot up your machine on a WinPE media and was the WinPE recovery media created on that particular machine?  I have had this happen when I used a WinPE media on a AMD machine where the WinPE media was made on an Intel machine.  My assumption was that the AMD drivers were missing on the WinPE media.  When I restored the system backup with a different WinPE media everything was okay.

witty

Thanks for your comment!
As this is the same machine (even same harddrive) - do you think it makes a different then to boot from a WinPE recovery media?

vbbritt

No, @Witty, I wouldn't think so.  What type of backup did you make?  Was it a system or disk backup?  When you restored the backup did you do a system restore or a disc restore or did you select a partition restore instead?  Did you restore all of the partitions in the backup or just drive C? 

witty

> What type of backup did you make? Was it a system or disk backup?

partition-backup (of the system-drive C:)

> When you restored the backup did you do a system restore or a disc restore or did you select a partition restore instead?

I chose the backup-file as source and chose a free "unpartitioned space" on the harddisk to restore to.

> Did you restore all of the partitions in the backup or just drive C? 

I restored the one and only partition from the backup (which was the system-partition C:)

was it wrong what I did?

admin

@Witty, "I backed up a Win10 System Partition on my dual boot system and restored it to the same harddisk"---Did you mean that there are two systems on the disk? two win10 systems? Did you use the partition backup way to back up C: drive only?
"I chose the backup-file as source and chose a free "unpartitioned space" on the harddisk to restore to."----Before restore, the original systems on the disk are deleted? or all partitions on the disk are deleted?

vbbritt

@Witty, First let me describe my understanding of what constitutes a viable UEFI bootable system.  If you examine the partitions on your boot drive you should see 3 partitions.  The efi partition is a small partition (about 100MB) that contains the boot information for the machine and tells the machine where to find drive C at.  The next partition is normally the Windows (drive C) partition, and the last partition is the recovery partition (contains the WinRE information).  So if I understand what you are saying you did a partition backup of your drive C partition and ignored the other two partitions on your drive.  Then you did a restore by clicking on the backup and instructing Backupper to write the information in a unpartitioned area on the disk.  My guess is that you did not backup or restore the EFI partition of the disc.  So if Backupper did not modify the EFI partition then it would still point to the previous destination where drive C used to begin.  My guess is that the information in the EFI partition was wrong and is what caused the restore to fail.

What should have been done was to perform a system backup or a disk backup and backup all of the partitions on drive C (at least the three partitions I mentioned above).  Then when you elect to restore your backup you would either perform a system restore or a disk restore causing the software (Backupper) to replace all of the information in those three partitions.  This is my best guess as to why your backup was not bootable. 

witty

> This is my best guess as to why your backup was not bootable.
but the strange thing is, that the partition IS bootable (see my initial post):
=> the "funny" part is, that obviously the system is kind of running in the background, as I even can connect via teamviewer (well, I also only see the black screen with the mousepointer in the remote session), but this proves, that network and even teamviewer-service is running...

admin

@Witty, Could you try to open Task Manager? If yes, please try to close explorer, and then click File-->Run a new task, then type "explorer" to browse.

witty

no, Ctrl+Alt+Del does also not work ...

admin

@Witty, could you try to use AOMEI PE Builder to create the WinPE bootable media, and then boot the computer from WinPE to check the disk? You can take a photo of disk management under WinPE so that we check.
http://www2.aomeisoftware.com/download/pe/2.0/full/PEBuilder.exe

witty

@Admin,
Thanks for your support

I created a Windows PE USB-Stick (128GB SanDiskUltra-Stick)
=> but I am not able to boot (UEFI-entry missing, and legacy boot does nothing)


Installed Windows10 MediaCreationTool20H2 on the same USB, to check, whether it works
=> UEFI boot works


What am I doing wrong?

admin

@Witty, Did you use AOMEI Backupper to create the WinPE bootable media? If yes, could you try to use AOMEI PE Builder to create again?
http://www2.aomeisoftware.com/download/pe/2.0/full/PEBuilder.exe

witty

I created the WinPE bootable with the WinPE-Builder (downloaded from the link you shared).

admin

@Witty, What is disk 3? Did you create WinPE to the disk 3? Did you mean that it is "Other" status after you create the WinPE USB after? If yes, please try to create the WinPE ISO, and then burn it to USB via a third-party burning tool.

witty

Disk3 is the USB-Stick - only wanted to show you the result of PE Builder.

What I tried:
* created an ISO and flashed USB stick => same result as before (not even showing the USB stick in the boot-options menu)
* used another USB stick (Samsung 256GB newest model) => same result as above
so in the end I am not able to boot into WinPE :-(

I used "ISO to USB" freeware to write the ISO.image to the USB stick

any other idea?

admin

@Witty, "I used "ISO to USB" freeware to write the ISO.image to the USB stick"---What status is the usb stick when you burning iso via third-party burning tool?
Could you send us the ISO image so that we check? You can upload it to your cloud and share to us.

witty

"status": PE Builder finished with "success"

ISO uploaded to https://is.gd/uzUJLA

admin

@Witty, We check that the iso is bootable. Please check f your USB stick is GPT format. If yes, please convert it to MBR via diskpart command, and then burn the iso to USB drive via a third-party burning tool again.

witty

See also in picture above (25.01.):
USB Stick is MBR!

admin

@Witty, Is it "Other" status after you using the "ISO to USB" freeware to write the ISO.image to the USB stick? Could you format the partition as NTFS, and then try to create WinPE again via AOMEI PE Builder?

witty

I now:

* Cleared the existing partition
* Created a new NTFS-partition - and verified it to be MBR and not GPT!

* Formatted NTFS-partition

* Created WinPE with AOMEI PE Builder

same result :-(

what is wrong here?

thanks

witty

or maybe coming back to initial request

how can I clone my existing Win10-partition to a second free partition on the same HD and make it dual bootable?

thanks!!!

admin

@Witty, Sorry that the dual system can't be built via only cloning a windows partition to the second partition. It might need to create boot for the dual system when installing the dual system.