SSR 2K13: Custom Recovery isn't bootable

[J__Scott_Elblei]

So, I created a x64 (it wouldn't allow me to create an x86 at all btw, which seems odd if I wanted to use the disk on an x86 system) Custom Recovery Disk ISO (which I had to do btw, because it wouldn't detect my attached USB thumb drive) and then "burned" the iso to my thumb drive using ISO to USB. Rebooted, went straight into my usual Windows. Figured maybe ISO to USB didn't work, so actually burned the ISO to a CD and rebooted again; again went straight into windows as usual. My BIOS is properly setup to detect both a USB device or CD/DVD before booting from the Hard Drive, which I also have confirmed works fine using other bootable disks I normally use for system issues.

Am I missing something?

[Markus_Koestler]

The only thing i can think of is that the driver is missing for your USB chipset. Try booting a standard SRD and load the appropriate drivers using the drvload command. You'll need the Windows 8/Server 2012 drivers for this since the SRD is based on windows PE 4.0

[criley]

Do you have VMware ESX/Workstation or Hyper-V available?

If yes, create a new virtual machine and attach the ISO and then power on the VM. If this boots into the recovery environment (as it's a new VM with blank disk, the ISO is the only thing it can boot from anyway), this proves the ISO is working.

[J__Scott_Elblei]

Thanks for the suggestion; this is interesting, I created a completely blank Win 8 x64 VM, used the CRD ISO to boot up from and it booted into the CRD; however, using the same exact ISO to boot up into an already made VM (w/Win 8 x64 installed) it just bypasses the the CRD and goes right into the regular OS as usual.

In other words, the CRD is only working properly if there's no OS already installed.

[J__Scott_Elblei]

Thanks Markus, I've never used drvload before so I'll have to check it out. The weird thing is, I've already looked at the driver file name that's being used normally on my system (USBSTOR.SYS) for accessing/using USB devices and manually loaded it into both the CRD as it was being created, and the windows version of SSR 2K13, with no luck in either case still, the USB devices simply refuse to show up.

In fact, if I boot from the Ghost 15 RD (which works properly for booting at least) and then manually load the USBSTOR.inf file from my system, I'm still unable to see any of my USB devices. But if I use Acronis True Image the USB devices do show up. Problem with that is, the external USB HDD that I'm trying to rescue the data off of is having CRC issues and ATI poops out during image creation, even if I select the Ignore CRC errors option.

Between a rock and a hard place! lol

[criley]

So this proves the ISO works then.

It will also work when an OS is installed, you just need to set the BOOT options in the BIOS to boot from CD, USB etc.

[J__Scott_Elblei]

I've already got the BIOS set to do that (as my OP mentioned: "My BIOS is properly setup to detect both a USB device or CD/DVD before booting from the Hard Drive, which I also have confirmed works fine using other bootable disks I normally use for system issues.")

I can pop this "working" SSR 2K13 boot disk out of the dvd drive, pop the Ghost 15 RD into the same drive, and boot right up into the Ghost Recovey. Something else is going on here.

[criley]

OK, so we know the ISO is good and you confirm that other CD's boot fine so the boot options (for CD at least) should also be ok.

The only other thing I can think of is that there was some problem with the way you burnt the ISO to CD/USB.

We may need to focus on why your USB drive is not listed when creating a recovery disk.