Failure of Restore

[rxlaw]

I had a hardware issue which required my starting with a brand new C: partition. "No problem," thought I, "Retrospect will save the day."

 

I run two backup scripts each night, each script writes a full backup on one of two external hard drives. I installed a temporary XP OS, installed Retrospect (and its updates), and selected the 6/8/08 catalog from one of these hard drives to recover. I selected the "Replace all contents of the Volume" option for C: and things seemed to be going OK.

 

However, when WinXP came up after the restore, the system state was in a horrible mess. Programs that had been installed are not working, the Windows Installer is corrupted, and my anti-virus program is one that was uninstalled months ago. Note that I use C: as a system drive, so only the OS and program files are stored on it; data files (fortunately) are on another drive.

 

Needless to say, I'm rather unhappy that Retrospect has failed me in this way. It seems it is very weak for bare metal restores, but I love it for pulling old files (and it works great for that)...

 

So, other than reinstalling my OS and all applications from scratch, does anyone have any ideas as to what would cause this type of failure?

 

Thanks,

Bob.

[Mayoff]

Did your temporary OS contain the same service pack you had at the time of the backup?

 

Did you backup "all files"?

 

Any errors during the restore?

 

Have you tried doing the restore in advanced mode instead of Wizard mode?

 

 

[rxlaw]

Hi Robin,

 

No error messages. I spent the entire day playing with the DR install and using that to restore the regular OS environment.

 

With great hope, I was able to restore the most recent snapshot. Now, things are weirder - when logging into the restored XP, as soon as the login process starts (see my customized desktop), XP immediately logs me off. Same with Administrator or any other user ID I've defined. Same in safe mode.

 

This really stinks. I'm off to do research on what can cause XP to log users off immediately upon login...

 

Bob.

[rxlaw]

OK, spending more time with this, I can definitively say that:

* Restoring "System State" causes the system, upon reboot, to immediately log off any user (described on the web as "logon/logoff loop"). No resolution, other than repair XP.

But, repairing the installation of XP results in the system thinking that it's installed on drive H: rather than C:.

Using several Registry tools to fix this, upon reboot the system works, but is impaired - no system updates, several programs erroring out on loading.

 

Restoring System State (or the complete C: volume) from Retrospect results in the first issue repeating.

 

Sigh. I now have to do a complete reinstallation of Windows XP and all my programs. But I can NO LONGER TRUST RETROSPECT to bail me out of a catastrophic system failure.

 

Retrospect remains awesome for backing up files and restoring files to their condition as of snapshot dates. But for me, it's useless and dangerous to attempt to Restore System State.

 

I would love for EMC to help me identify what is causing the restore system state to fail so dramatically.

 

Bob.

[Mayoff]

I would love for EMC to help me identify what is causing the restore system state to fail so dramatically.

 

From the forum rules:

 

While this forum is monitored by members of the EMC Technical Support team, it is not possible to reply to all questions and threads. This forum is not an official method for contacting technical support. EMC employees are under no obligation to reply to individual forum posts. If you need immediate technical support, you can contact technical support directly at http://www.emcinsignia.com/contactsupport

 

I would call for technical support. I am sure they can help identify why the restore failed.