Backup and Restore (Windows 7) - Windows could not find a backup for this computer.

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Backup and Restore (Windows 7) - Windows could not find a backup for this computer.

You used "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" to make a system image of our hard drive or SSD a little while back. Now you needed to restore your drive from the image. After booting up your computer normally, you pop in the USB drive with the image, but Windows can't find your backup. You click on "Select another backup to restore files from" and still nothing (see screen shot below). You even made sure the image drive have the folder named "WindowsImageBackup" and it's named exactly like that. But nothing.

What happened!?

Attached Image:

Backup and Restore (Windows 7). Windows could not find a backup for this computer.png

Simon
Thu, 19 May 2022 13:59:32 -0700

That's a very common misconception and one that had taken me all night to figure out. I experienced it with Windows 10 and Windows 11, but I'm sure it'd be the same on Windows 7 and Windows 8. The reason Windows 10 and Windows 11 doesn't show the backup is because I've boot into Windows normally on that PC laptop. It can't restore the backup onto the hard drive or SSD while the drive is running the current Windows instance.

To restore the system image, you'd have to boot the PC from the Windows system repair disc that it asked whether you wanted to create after creating a system image.

I didn't have a Windows system repair disc, but I happened to have Windows 8 and Windows 10 set-up disc on USB flash drives. Booting up either of them allows you to restore the system image onto the hard drive or SSD by following these steps:

Choose "Repair your computer" rather than installing Windows.
Select "Troubleshoot".
Select "Advanced options".
Insert the system image drive into another USB port.
Select "System Image Recovery".

Voila! You should see your dated backup image automatically selected for restore.

Simon
Thu, 19 May 2022 14:06:57 -0700

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