Windows 10 rollback disaster

danthemoneysavingman

Hi,
so, Windows 10 wasn't doing it for me.

(The window borders so narrow I couldn't resize them without a lot of effort (is there an alternative way to resize? I tried changing border size but i simply couldn't achieve that either))

So, I chose the rollback to windows 8.1 option. The result? it failed, borked my hard drive and I could not boot anything nor repair the hard drive.
(It is possible this is due to my having Intel RST active? no idea.)

No problem! I thought. I've got Acronis 2014 and a full disk backup, I'll just restore that and all will be fine. Wrong! Completely failed, laptop still wouldn't work and I'd lost a months worth of stuff since I last backed up as a bonus.

I could not figure out how to restore my hard drive. Turns out Acronis says (in small print buried deep in their forums near the back of the internet ;-) ) that it cannot restore a disk where IRST was active.

So I am wondering if any of you guys can help me.

I have a perfectly viable partition backup of my C: drive (amongst other partitions) in the Acronis backup, which I'd love to restore. Even if it was just that c: partition.

So the question: any idea if I can restore that C: partition, and make my hard drive boot?

e.g. could just restoring it and trying the fixmbr/... route actually work?

I'd try it but have a working (albeit not well set up) OS running (with most of my stuff not there) which I don't want to trash if this is simply not achievable.

My set-up: Dell XPS 15 L521x. I've also just got a replacement mSATA 250GB SSD which I'd love to use so ideally I'd restore my c: partition back up to that SSD and go from there.

Anyone know how to solve this problem?

(please don't suggest I google it, I have spent days trying that and to resolve the issue!)

Thanks for your time folks
Dan

esuhl

Eek. I feel your pain! With backups, you think you're covered! I'd never use fakeRAID on my system (again) as it can cause so many problems. A friend's motherboard died and without the exact same motherboard with the exact same revision and firmware, his drives were inaccessible.

Anyway...

danthemoneysavingman wrote: »

So the question: any idea if I can restore that C: partition, and make my hard drive boot?

e.g. could just restoring it and trying the fixmbr/... route actually work?

Yes -- that should work. I have multiple OSes on my system, so have had to use bootrec /fixmbr on several occasions. Have a look at the /fixboot parameter if /fixmbr doesn't work.

danthemoneysavingman wrote: »

I'd try it but have a working (albeit not well set up) OS running (with most of my stuff not there) which I don't want to trash if this is simply not achievable.

You shouldn't need to trash any OS (unless you need to overwrite it due to lack of disk space).

When you turn on your PC, the BIOS settings determine which drive is booted. That drive is checked for an MBR (the master boot record, which exists in a reserved space at the start of the drive). The MBR contains a bootloader, which allows you to select a particular partition to boot from.

If you have multiple physical drives, you can set up your PC to boot from drive 1, and set up the MBR to (say) boot partition 1 of drive 1. You can then change the BIOS settings to boot from drive 2, and install an MBR that boots partition 1 of drive 2 (or partition 2 of drive 1, or whatever you want). That way you can just switch the settings in the BIOS to choose which OS to boot. This is handy for testing, when you don't want to mess with an existing setup.

Alternatively (if you intend to keep multiple OSes), you can just add multiple OSes to the bootloader. The bootloader on the drive that boots can be set up to let you boot different Windows (or any other OS). The /scanos and /rebuildbcd options of bootrec should guide you through this.

System

Hi

I would look to make a live recovery DVD or USB stick with a Linux OS loaded on. This should allow you to see partitions etc.

I would consider then seeing what data can be lifted off. Another possibilty is to shrink the partitions (or convert a recovery area) and install an OS like Win 8.1 and from there look to load / re-install the Intel RST drivers (https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/22194/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST-RAID-Driver).

Something like KNOPPIX is really useful in these situations, along with Debian and Mint et al.

esuhl

johndough wrote: »

I would look to make a live recovery DVD or USB stick with a Linux OS loaded on. This should allow you to see partitions etc.

GParted (the GNU Partition Editor) has a live CD version:
http://gparted.org/

danthemoneysavingman

Hi and thnks for the initial response esuhl!

So I tried booting from a windows 8.1 install USB and went ro repair--> command line.
Went bootrec /scanos and it showed my HDD as having a valid windows installation on it (along with my mSATA SSD which is my current working boot device).

I proceeded with bootrec /rebuildbcd. It found both and I said yes to add both to boot list. HOWEVER... it returned the message "The requested system device cannot be found"......

I'm unsure if this would be related to the build being GPT? Either way, what's next?

Your help is greatly appreciated

esuhl

Hmmm... I haven't seen that message before. And I'm not overly familiar with UEFI/GPT builds... :-/

Do any of the suggestions here help:
http://superuser.com/questions/302603/problem-recreating-bcd-on-windows-7-64bit-the-requested-system-device-cannot-b

danthemoneysavingman

I've got close, but not close enough.

I am able to boot into the OS install I want to recover, but only in safe mode (with networking). And only sometimes weirdly. There is no /boot directory on this disk so I guess it can only be booted through UEFI boot? It was switching to uefi from legacy that borked my working SSD install (which I now cannot get to boot either!).

I'm really hoping someone knows how to successfully get this back in working order, what BIOS settings I need (e.g. must I set it to uefi boot? What must I do to my partition(s) before I try to boot?)

I can try the thing with DISKPART (again) as per the answer here: http://superuser.com/questions/460762/how-can-i-repair-the-windows-8-efi-bootloader
But it didn't sort the problem last time, perhaps 2nd/3rd time's the charm!?!

Any further help anyone can offer would be most welcome!

Thanks
Dan