SSR Restore of Win 8.1 will not boot

[ssr-tester]

Hi,

we have been using Norton Ghost with Windows 7 for years. As we are rolling out Windows 8.1 in my company. I have been testing SSR to backup and restore a Windows 8.1 system with upgrade of the SSD from 128GB to 256GB.

I did a full backup of the SSD, swapped the drives, used diskpart to clean the disk and then used the Symantec disk to restore the operating system.

The restore reported it had completed the job, but the system refused to boot. The files can be seen on the new drive, but rebooting is impossible. 

I have spent the past 4 days reading every message I could find on this forum to get this to work - to no avail.

Using the Windows 8.1 installation disk, I have tried to repair the boot, but nothing works.

Start-Up Repair reports: "Start-up Repair couldn't reapair your PC"

"Refresh your PC" reports: "The drive where Windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again"

Using the command prompt, I tried to manualy fix the boot sector.

diskpart.exe

list disk

select disk 0

attributes disk

Current Read-only State : No

Read-only : No

Boot Disk : No

Pagefile Disk : No

Hibernation File Disk : No

Crashdump Disk : No

attributes volume

Read-only : No

Hidden : No

No Default Drive Letter: No

Shadow Copy : No

bootrec /fixmbr

The operation completed successfully

bootrec.exe /fixboot

The operation completed successfully

bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd

Total identified Windows installations: 1

[1]  C:\Windows

Add installation to boot list? Y

The requested system device cannot be found.

bcdboot c:\Windows /s c:

Boot files successfully created

sfc /scannow

Verification 100% complete

Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation.

bcdboot c:\windows /s c: /f UEFI /v

Boot files successfully created

Despite all this, I am no nearer to getting Windows 8.1 to boot.

What am I missing? What do I need to finally get my system to boot?
Or is the only solution to forget the restore and reinstall Windows from scratch.

I hope somebody here can help me...

[RahulG]

Do you have service pack 2 installed ?

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH211263

[criley]

Have you followed the steps mentioned here?

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH129112

[ssr-tester]

System Recovery 2013 R2 - 11.1.0.53728

I assume this means I have service pack 2.

I am using the recovery disk that I created from this version,

[ssr-tester]

1. I backed up all partitions on the drive (the C: drive plus 3 additional small system partitions).

2. I user diskpart to clean the target drive before the restore operation.

3. I restored all the partitions that were previously backed up.

So yes, I did follow the steps mentioned in that document (I have tried this twice, so far).

[criley]

I am correct in thinking that you are restoring back to the same machine that you backed up (the only change is that you are restoring to a new blank SSD drive)?

After restore, what error or message do you see when trying to boot the machine?

Is the machine configured for legacy BIOS or UEFI?

[ssr-tester]

Yes, I am restoring back to exactly the same computer, just with a new, blank SSD drive.

When I try to reboot after the restore, the screen just remains black with a blinking cursor, followed by:
"Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key" 

I have retried the restore operation on both SSD drives (old and new) with exactly the same default parameters. Both drives were cleaned with Diskpart before the restore.

Both drives show 5 restored partitions shown in diskpart as follows:

Partition #, Type, Size, Offset 

Partition 1, Recovery, 350MB, 1024 KB
Partition 2, System, 100MB, 351MB
Partition 3, Reserved, 128MB, 451MB
Partition 4, Primary, 110GB, 579MB
Partition 5, Recovery, 300MB, 111GB

Suprisingly, there is a difference (apart from the size).

Old SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 SATA 3 128GB

New SSD: Samsung SSD 840 EVO SATA 3 256GB

Both drives will not boot, however when I use the Windows installation disk, the old drive would allow me to "Refresh your PC" whereas the new drive reports "The drive where Windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again.

Considering both drives were restored in exactly the same way (even the same SATA port), could this be a hardware issue?

My next step is to try a fresh install of Windows on the new drive and to carry out the "Refresh your PC" on the old drive. Unless anyone here has a better idea?

[criley]

It could well be a hardware problem. Try a Google search for:

ssd reboot and select proper boot device

[ssr-tester]

Despite the problems accessing the new drive from the restored backup, I was able to install a fresh version of Windows 8.1 Pro onto the Samsung SSD drive without any difficulties.

As I suspect the problems with the restore were related to the additional small partitions, can I now simply delete the new C: drive partition and restore just the old C: partition from my backup?

Would that work, or is it better to just reinstall all the programs on the new install?

[criley]

That might work but personally I would recommend opening a support case otherwise we wont get to the bottom of the issue with SSR.

[ssr-tester]

I decided to try this on my old SSD. I installed a fresh copy of Windows 8 Pro (with network disconnected, as this is a test, no need to activate it) and checked that it was bootable.

I then restored the backed up C: partition (and only that partition) on top of the newly installed Windows.

When I then tried to boot it up after the restore, I got the following message:
 

"An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that don't contain an operating system."

There was one other drive still connected - the drive containing the backup data - so I disconnected that and rebooted. I then got a different message:

"Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key."

I then inserted the Windows installation disk and booted into the repair menu and tried "Automatic Repair"

"Automatic Repair couldn't repair your PC"

I then tried "Refresh your PC":

"The drive where Windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again"

Interesting, as previously this drive did not generate that message.

Next, I tried a full install with Upgrade option. I then got this message: "The computer started using the Windows installation media. Remove the installation media and restart your computer so that Windows starts normally. Then, insert the installation media and restart the upgrade. Custom [advanced] installs a new copy of windows and deletes your programs and settings."

I remember reading here somewhere that another forum member tried copying and pasting the backed up Windows directory onto a running fresh install. I will try that next, it will take a little time to setup as I first need to copy the data onto another empty drive and then reinstall a fresh copy of Windows again on my old drive. I will report here later, if that worked or not.

If that does not work, then I will have to continue reinstaling all my programs and data again from scratch - SSR will have completely failed in its core job of backing up and restoring Windows 8.1 into a running system. Pity as I liked using Ghost up to Windows 7 and hoped SSR would work in a similar way for Windows 8.1. I was obviously mistaken after wasting 6 days trying to restore a full backup with SSR.

Does anyone here have any other ideas how I can try to save my system? 

It will take me at least 3 days to reinstall all the software and data again to the fresh install. At least I can still access the files from my old system, just cannot get it to boot-up.

[criley]

- SSR will have completely failed in its core job of backing up and restoring Windows 8.1 into a running system. Pity as I liked using Ghost up to Windows 7 and hoped SSR would work in a similar way for Windows 8.1. I was obviously mistaken after wasting 6 days trying to restore a full backup with SSR.

Do you have a support contract with us? If yes, why not open a case and let support try and fix the issue? It's not always possible to fix issues like this via the forums....

[ssr-tester]

I tried to use the support system first, but as we only have Ghost licences and I am trialing SSR for our company, support was refused and we were referred to this forum for support.

Our company is only just starting to upgrade from Windows 7 to 8.1 and it is my job to implement the upgrades. As Ghost does not work with Windows 8.1, I obtained a trial version of SSR. If it had worked properly, we would then order the licences for the full product, but as this first test has failed so badly, I am probably going to look at another product like Acronis, instead. Pity, as Ghost had worked well for many years, but it would be difficult to convince anyone to purchase licences for SSR after this experience.

So unfortunately my only way of getting support from you guys is via this forum.

[criley]

OK, understood.

In that case, you may want to contact your local Symantec sales office (or partner if you work with one) as they may be able to open a support case on your behalf.

[ssr-tester]

I am going to complete the final test described earlier and if that fails, I am simply going to rebuild the system from scratch by reinstalling all the software and data that was installed before. It will take some time to do that, but at least I know I will have a working system in the end.

There comes a point when you have to accept defeat and abandon further attempts to restore the data.

Continuing beyond this final test has little chance of working and only will waste my time, which I can better use for other projects.

When I contacted the local Symantec support team, the engineer contacted his boss and tried to get a support ticket authorized, but his boss denied this request catagorically. We are only a small company and would not be ordering more than 50 licences. Too small to be worth supporting our pre-sales tests, apparantly. 

Symantec is not the only company offering backup and restore solutions.

[gsuburban]

I have found SSR to be a complete blunder when compared to Ghost. SSR will restore from Ghost images however, good luck in getting SSR to install 100% let alone do what it's supposed to.

I have a late model high end computer with a Samsung SSD Pro and SSR will not install correctly. I'm no novice either but if the software can't install, where's the problem? Likely the software since everything else that I install works fine and as it should.  Windows 8.1 x64 Pro yet no help from Symantec is going to happen as they tell me in order to open a support ticket, I have to have a software key which means instead of trying the trial software which isn't working, I have to buy a license key. Really?  Symantec went down hill long ago however, Ghost I continued to use and still do on windows 7 machines and older.

Why Win 8 and SSR doesn't install and work correctly, as noted in these forums, there's all kinds of talk with problems installing, creating restore discs, restoring and so forth, it is obvious the software didn't get enough engineering and it fails outside of Symantec labs in large numbers per these forums.

Too bad too, it's hard to sell a software if the trial won't work from the get go plus, in your case, your problems have everything to do with how SSR created your image yet won't restore, as mentioned in these forums with others.

Waste of time and energy...time for a change to another back up company such as Acronis.