Server in reboot loop after complete restore
This is resolved. A few lessons learned here.
1. If your going to rely on this product for backups don't think you can restore from one server to another without pre-staging it. Meaning to make this work I had to install Server on the destination computer, install and activate SBESR to create a custom driver CD (even though it passes driver verification). Afterwards I took my SBESR image from the source and deployed it to the destination using the previously created Driver CD.
2. As Jon_R commented there is an option to allow the program to prompt for drivers during the restore process. It’s actually an option to prompt for drivers, strip out existing drivers and run a mini setup (which you will likely need to do to restore to different hardware). It’s quite literally hidden. When you select the option you have to hold down CTRL and SHIFT to make it come up. I still can’t believe such a critical component would be hidden in a secret menu.
Despite those hang-ups the product worked without any problems. The only thing I really had to do after the image was deployed was install a handful of drivers once in Windows that the custom driver CD wouldn’t take and redo the DNS and WINS settings.
