Disaster recovery disaster

[cdsvoj]

I am posting this for a friend who I am trying to help. She has a Windows ME system that is inoperative. I can boot the system and shut it down but nothing else. She has been using Retrospect Express to back up the system using 2 backup sets that are rotated weekly. The first backup of each weekly cycle is a recycle backup followed by subsequent daily backups of changed files. A disaster recovery CD was created for each of the backup sets several months ago. On Christmas eve her system froze and has been useless ever since.

 

 

 

We booted from the recovery CD and everything worked as advertised and Retrospect asked to confirm that I wanted to recover from the snapshot stored on the CD (which was taken several months ago). I chose to have Retrospect recreate the catalog from the current backup set that was recycled last Saturday. It built the catalog consisting of 23,444 files and I told it to start the restore. The restore process selected ~8300 files and the end result is that the computer is still inoperative. Am I missing something? I would have expected retrospect to Restore 23000 or so files. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I went through this process with both backup sets with similar results. I'm about ready to bite the bullet and re-install everything from scratch (I really really don't want to do that). I'm hoping someone on this forum will be able to show me the error of my ways.

[AmyJ]

In reply to:

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The restore process selected ~8300 files and the end result is that the computer is still inoperative.

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Are you able to boot? If not, what errors do you see?

 

 

 

What about the Operations Log in Retrospect - are you able to gain access and look for error messages?

 

 

 

Are you reformatting the hard drive between restore attempts? If not, make sure you wipe the drive first. While it is not usually necessary, in this case, it would be the best step.

 

 

 

I can't see anything in your post that would indicate that you are doing anything incorrectly. In fact, the wizard is designed to walk you through step by step to ensure the restore is set up correctly.

 

 

 

If you install a basic OS on the computer - can it boot? If not, there could be hardware issues that are preventing the machine from functioning normally.

 

 

 

Should the DR process continue to fail, you can also do a Live Restore. Install a basic OS, install Retrospect, rebuild the catalog file (if necessary) for the set you'll be using and then use the Restore > Restore Entire Disk option. Once the restore is complete, reboot and the computer should be back to the state it was in last Saturday.

[cdsvoj]

The system will shutdown and boot up to the Windows desktop with most of the Icons on the desktop missing (except the default things like My DOcuments), the Quick Launch toolbar to the right of the start button is empty as well as the system tray (excepting the default things like the volume icon and the clock). Nothing happens when clicking on any control on the desktop (icons start button). Alt-Ctrl-Del brings up the active tasks and selecting Shutdown shuts the system down. Other than that system is inoperative.

 

I didn't format the drive during any attempt to restore the system. I left my friends house before the restore had completed and expected that the end result would be the same. Silly me, I found out later that the last restore using the older of the two backup sets failed and now the system is fine. The OPLOG indicated that the backup set was incomplete. Apparently the damaged or missing files were restored prior to the error. I'm going to look at the logs for the two backup sets tomorrow and see if I can find any errors. As it stands the system is fine, but I am very uncomfortable with the process. I will continue this thread after I've looked at the logs and hopefully can shed some light on the incomplete backup set..