Dave-H

LOL, yes, good analogy! I was amazed to find that the 'Windows 7 Backup and Restore' system was still present in Windows 11, I would have thought they would have used that 'upgrade' as an opportunity to ditch it. They no longer support it, and have actually advised people to find alternatives to it, so why it's still there on new systems is a bit of a mystery. Having left it in Windows 11, I suppose they can't really just remove it now, as people will have made backups with it which would then become useless. Any recommendations for 3rd party system imaging programs? Free would be ideal, but not essential, but I would like something which will work on XP with FAT32 drives.

@D.Draker Yes, exactly the same BIOS version, in fact the replacement board has the BIOS chip from the previous board plugged into it! As the three week older System Image worked, it does look as if the problem with the more recent image had nothing to do with the hardware change. @jaclaz I have mounted all three of the vhdx files of the recent backup. They all mount fine, and I can see all the files in them. Why they won't actually restore is a mystery. As an aside, after running a Windows Update session, which has brought the system up to date again, KB5034441 is now trying (and failing) to install again. I find it quite unbelievable that even Microsoft would roll out an update that needs the Recovery Partition extended on some (many? all?) systems for it to install. How many Windows 10 users would have any idea how to do that?! Anyway, I'm obstinately not going to manually extend the partition for them this time, and will wait and let it fail multiple times in the hope that it will be fixed on the next patch Tuesday! Going back to the original problem, I know that the built-in legacy Windows 7 Backup and Restore system on Windows 10 (and surprisingly 11) is depreciated by Microsoft, and the wisdom is to not now use it and use 3rd party alternatives. After this experience, I think this might be a good idea! Any recommendations? There seem to be loads of alternatives. Ideally I would like something that's free and will also work on Windows XP. At the moment I do System Images of the Windows 10 disk every week, and just do a basic file copy backup of my Windows XP and 98 drives. If I could find something that would also do an ISO backup of those drives that would be good. Thanks again for the help as always. Cheers, Dave.

Thanks @jaclaz! They are vhdx files. I will put the new disk back in, and see if I can mount them OK and read their contents. Looking at the last successful restore, it restored the C: drive partition first, and then the System Reserved and Recovery partitions. The failed restore only seemed to restore the C: drive partition, and then failed with the 'parameter incorrect' message. So it looks as if it was trying to restore the System Reserved or Recovery partition which actually failed. I had increased the size of the Recovery partition to allow the KB5034441 Windows Update to install, which had kept on failing. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-10-kb5034441-security-update-fails-with-0x80070643-errors/ I increased it from 524MB to 1024MB. The new restore has of course put it back to 524MB. Whether this is relevant I don't know, as I'm sure that the failed restore was from an image made after the partition was resized.

Thanks guys, but panic (largely) over! As a last clutching at straws attempt, I dug out my old backup HDD, which had a System Image on it from the 1st January. To my amazement, it worked! Obviously very pleased at that, but that does beg the question as to why the much more recent System Image wouldn't work! It was made doing a routine System Image backup I do every week, and I had no reason to think that there was anything wrong with it. If you remember on another thread, we were discussing accessing 3TB GPT disks on XP? Well the image which has just worked was on the old 2TB MBR disk, the newer one on the new 3TB GPT disk. Whether this is at all relevant I do not know. I am now of course worried that System Images made to that disk might fail in the future. I'm just glad i got my system back, although it now needs a bit more updating of course! Cheers, Dave.

I have a problem with my Windows 10 installation! As can be seen from my signature, I have a triple boot machine. Windows XP and Windows 98 are absolutely fine. What happened was that I changed my motherboard as the original developed a fault. The replacement is exactly the same board, same make and model. All was working fine until suddenly, I couldn't boot into Windows 10, I just got an "Inaccessible Boot Drive" BSOD. I tried everything I could think of to fix this, there seemed to be no physical problem, the Windows 10 drive could be accessed fine from XP and 98, and all the files seemed to be there. A chkdsk run on XP did find some problems, and apparently corrected them, but no difference in Windows 10. Automatic repairs by Windows 10 did no good at all, and booting into a recovery environment and trying to rebuild the boot with fixboot etc. also made no difference. Eventually, to cut a long story short, I gave up trying to repair whatever was wrong, and decided to restore a System Image I had made some days before. What I suspect had happened was that the boot files on the drive had got damaged somehow, and chkdsk and fixboot couldn't repair them. The restore didn't work, it went through all the motions of copying to the C: drive, and then at the very end it said it had failed because "The Parameter is Incorrect". That is one of the most annoying error messages in Windows, (second only to "Access is Denied"), as it never gives you any clue as to what the parameter is and what's wrong with it! Anyway, I tried several times and it failed every time. I've no reason to think that there's anything wrong with the System Image. Having done this, of course my original Windows 10 installation was completely trashed, leaving me with an apparently unformatted drive when looked at in XP. I then did a clean installation of Windows 10, which worked fine. However, trying the System Image restore again just produced the same result and trashed the installation again! Has anyone any idea what could be wrong here? I did wonder if the System Restore is failing because the hardware has changed, even though the replacement motherboard is the same make and model, although I've done system restores before between computers with different hardware, and it's always worked. Unfortunately I didn't do another System Image after I changed the motherboard, I wish I had now of course! Is there any way to force the System Image onto the drive, perhaps with 3rd party software? Some programs claim to be able to do what they call a 'Universal Restore' which will allow you to put a system image from one computer onto another one with different hardware. Unfortunately, most seem to only be able to do that with System Images they have generated, not ones generated with Microsoft Backup and Restore. Any suggestions very gratefully received. I just want my highly personalised version of Windows 10 back! Thanks, Dave.

Thanks guys! That one on eBay looks interesting, I think I can risk a fiver on that, if only to just play with it! I've ordered it anyway, if I think it will do the job I'll then look into sourcing an ASMedia eSATA card. Cheers, Dave.

Thanks again! One of those extenders could potentially solve my problem, as I could then fit an ASMedia card using it, as long as the 'plug' end will go into the PCI-U socket, which it looks as if it will. You can see the PCI-U socket, the short blue one, at the bottom left of the board in the picture. I have a small card plugged in there at the moment which feeds my DVD drive, but that's using the SATA socket on the card top edge, the eSATA socket on the card side edge is inaccessible as that socket has no removable plate beside it like the other six slots above it as it's (I think) designed for an internal expansion card of some sort. Obviously, I wouldn't want the card flying around loose in the case, but I'm sure that can be sorted out!

My motherboard is a Supermicro X7DAL-E+ server board. I only tried the ASMedia driver on the Silicon Image eSATA card, as that's the only place I really need to use it.

Back again! No go I'm afraid. The ASMedia driver installed OK, and no BSOD on reboot this time, but the boot splash screen animation just moved very very slowly and never went any further. Trying in Safe Mode did produce a BSOD, the first time STOP 0x000000C2 (BAD_POOL_CALLER) and then the second time STOP 0x0000007E. It was worth a try though, thanks very much @Andalu! I guess I'm just going to have to accept that I'm not going to be able to use my 3TB disk on an eSATA connection with XP. The only answer would be to somehow get an actual ASMedia card into the system, which as they are only PCI-E is going to be physically impossible at the moment. I suppose there are no such things as PCI-E extender cables which will allow the card to be physically separated from its slot? There are right-angled spacers and that sort of thing, but none of the ones I've seen will work around my particular problem I'm afraid. Cheers, Dave.

Thank you again, especially for the links! I will try with that driver and let you know how I get on. Cheers, Dave.

Thanks again @Andalu! I've searched, but I cannot find a download of the ASMedia v2.0.3.1 driver which doesn't involve installing the sites' driver downloader software, which I refuse to do! The only version I could find a direct download of was v1.4.1. After modifying the INF file, it appeared to install OK, but the system just produced a BSOD when rebooted. I guess that unless v2.0.3.1 is very different, it will produce the same result. What a shame, but it was worth a try! Cheers, Dave.

Thank you so much again @Andalu that's really helpful! So it looks as if the version of Paragon HFS+ that I'm using isn't actually 100% XP compatible. It does sound as if the loss of that driver isn't significant in this case though. I could certainly buy an ASMedia card, which would probably work from what you say, but I have nowhere to plug it in if it's only available as PCI-E. I wonder if there are any other eSATA cards which might work and be available in PCI or PCI-X?

Is there a 32 bit version of that 1.2.15.3 driver? I did look a week or two ago, but I couldn't find one. I'll have another search. It's a very long shot IMO, but it's worth a try!

Thanks, that's very interesting to know. I have to say that as the card functions perfectly with the 3TB disk under Windows 10, I'm a bit loathe to start trying different BIOS versions. If anything goes wrong, the card could be permanently bricked of course! I'm still pretty convinced that it's the card's driver which is at fault here. Although the Windows 10 driver is apparently earlier (1.2.15.3) than the XP driver (1.3.71.1) this could again be a numbering anomaly, especially as the Windows 10 driver is apparently from 2009 and the XP driver from 2008! The Windows 10 driver is also 64 bit. The other fly in the ointment is the Paragon HFS+ program's Core Storage Volumes Driver. This will not run on my system, saying it can't find a necessary file. It is just vaguely possible that the disk is not being seen in Disk Management because this driver isn't running. Unfortunately, I've not been able to find out much at all about the Core Storage Volumes Driver and what it's supposed to do!

Thanks @Dixel but it looks as if the BIOS on my card is already a later version than that, 4.3.53.

@jaclaz Thanks again. I guess the only way to find out is to shrink the existing partition on the disk to 2TB, and see if it's then miraculously seen by XP Disk Management. I've already transferred my archive onto the single partition, many tens of thousands of files, so I really don't want to re-format it! I can certainly shrink the partition to below 2TB though, as there isn't 2TB of data there. If that smaller partition is seen by XP, I can then try making another partition in the now-unallocated space and see if that gets seen as well. Actually a 2TB partition that can be seen in XP would do fine for me, it doesn't really matter if the other partition can only be seen in Windows 10. I really, really want this to work as an eSATA connected disk, having a usually unpowered disk enclosure connected directly to the motherboard is an absolute PITA. Not only physically, in terms of having a lead running out of the case to it, but having to shut down and restart (twice!) every time I want to use it for it to work reliably without corruption. EDIT: Actually looking back in the thread, I think I already tried a smaller partition on the disk, and that didn't work either.

@D.Draker Thanks, but that is the driver I'm already using. v1.3.71.1. @jaclaz I take it that I'm right in saying that it's the physical size of the disk as a whole which is the problem. It would make no difference if it was formatted into two partitions which were less than 2TB?

I'll give that a try, but I don't hold out much hope. I do think the problem is almost certainly the Silicon Image driver for the eSATA card. The Windows 10 driver supports GPT disks of that size connected to the card, the XP driver doesn't. It's still odd to me that the disk is being seen in Device Manager though. As there seems to be no driver for XP later than the one I'm using, I guess I'm stuck. I will have a search for a Vista driver for the card, if there's a chance that can work on XP it might be an answer.

Thanks @jaclaz. I actually already use Hotswap! and have been doing so for many years! I use it to unmount the drive in the enclosure before I de-power the enclosure. With a SATA connection instead of an eSATA connection, it does still work to unmount the drive, which is fine. The problem is with starting to use it, I used to just power it up and the system would mount it. Now that doesn't happen of course, I have to reboot for the drive to be recognised.

Thanks @roytam1! Previous thread locked.

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LOL @jaclaz yes, happy days! The external enclosure I'm now using thankfully does not have the same problems as the one I was using. Normal disks work fine on the eSATA connection and the USB connection, with no compatibility issues. I do now have a cable to connect the enclosure to a port on the motherboard, bypassing the interface card. It works fine, but of course I'm losing all the hot-plugging advantages of an eSATA connection. I don't want to have the enclosure powered up all the time, and I used to be able to just power it up and the connection would be recognised and the disk mounted. Now I have to reboot, which is annoying. I guess you can't have everything in this world though!

Thanks very much @Andalu that's really useful! Am I right in assuming that the ASMedia cards you refer to don't exist as PCI or PCI-X cards? I have two PCI-E slots on the motherboard, but they both have graphics cards in them! This is because of my multi-boot configuration. One card is for Windows 98 and has no Windows 10 drivers, the other card is for Windows 10 and has no Windows 98 drivers! I can use both of them in Windows XP. There is another small slot on the board which Supermicro describe as a 'PCI-U' slot. This is intended for some sort of internal expansion card. It's also a PCI-E x8 slot, and I'm using it for one of my Silicon Image cards. Unfortunately the eSATA socket on the card is not physically accessible (I'm only using the SATA port on the card edge to connect my Blu-ray drive). I might be able to fit an ASMedia card into that slot, but connecting my eSATA disk enclosure would be very difficult without a lot of physical surgery! Am I also right in assuming that an ASMedia card would have no Windows 98 drivers? That may not be a real problem, as the Silicon Image card in the PCI-E slot at the moment doesn't have Windows 98 drivers either. If I'm only using it for the eSATA enclosure and the Blu-ray drive, that's not an issue as I wouldn't expect to use either of them on Windows 98 anyway. Thanks again for the help! Cheers, Dave.

Well all I can say is that I've been using Seagate Barracuda drives for quite some years now, and I've always found them to be very reliable. I've certainly never had one fail. I only ever used them as data drives, my system drives are all SSDs now of course. Thanks for the heads up though!

Yes indeed. We usually do it when new builds are issued, so if you could create a new thread for your next builds @roytam1 that would be good, and I will then lock this thread. Thanks, Dave.