Restoring Macrium image leads to: Error 100

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[TJ]

Hi guys, since a few month I run Macrium Reflect Home v7.2.x (paid version) and run daily back ups, but until yesterday I never had to restore an image.
However, yesterday an update for my vpn client messed things up (solved now), so I had to restore an image. It did not succeed though: it resulted in “Error 100”.
(I bought a license from someone else, so I can’t get support from Macrium directly.)
So now I’m stuck. And having to ‘upgrade’ to 1903 or 1909 in the near future, being able to restore a good image is a must, isn’t it?

 

My rig: Windows 10 Pro 1809 x64 desktop with 3 internal drives:
1. GPT1 with Windows 10 partition (C:) and a data only partition (D:)
2. GPT2 for back ups (B:)
3. MBR with Windows 7 Pr

 

What I don’t understand, is why Macrium ‘sees’ the image file on GPT2(B:) but shows both ‘Source: GPT1’ and ‘Destination: GPT1’ (instead of ‘Source: GPT2’)??
(Or is that because Macrium defines ‘source’ as where the image originates from?)

 

Again: image file on GPT2(B:) and both Source and Destination: GPT1.

 

Step ‘Run from Windows PE’.

 

And ‘Error 100’ after reboot, with the notification “Searching for marker file…”, “Not found”.

 

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks, TJ

MintDE is my daily driver now. Old friend Win10 keeps spinning in the background

• This topic was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by TJ.
• This topic was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by TJ.
• This topic was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by TJ. Reason: Being stupid :/
• This topic was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by TJ.
• This topic was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by PKCano.

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Yeah, that’s my major pet peeve about Macrium Reflect. I love MR because in my extensive testing on non-mainstream configurations it has proven more reliable than most of the competition, but it’s UI is confusing and definitely deserves to be redesigned.

In your case, it’s a matter of being more precise about your understanding of what “Source” and “Destination” mean. In your second screenshot, note the “Source” line says “8-12-2019 14:00 B:E0CFAD5DA98072AC-00-00.mrimg” and the “Destination” is “Local Disk”. So your source is a .mrimg file and the destination is a physical disk drive.

The upper “GPT Disk 1” block represents the original source, embedded within the .mrimg file, of whatever was, at the time, “GPT Disk 1”. It’s worth noting that “GPT Disk 1” may not necessarily refer to the same physical HDD every time, it’s just MR’s record of where the HDD was in the system at the moment MR backed it up.

Similarly, “Win10-OS (C:)” in the upper block doesn’t refer to your present C: partition, it refers to what was the C: partition at the time of backup.

It might perhaps be clearer if MR referred to the source as “xx.mrimg/GPT Disk 1/Win10-OS”, but that could quickly become unwieldy. Instead, in your third screenshot you’ll note how those are displayed as three different sections separated by horizontal rules:  Image File, Source Disk, and Restore Partition.

Understand that during a restore you cannot replace the actively booted OS — you cannot boot into the 4th partition and restore the 4th partition at the same time as you are booted into it. This is what your 4th screenshot is telling you.

The proper way to restore is to boot from the MR “Rescue media” (CD or USB stick), at which time the 4th partition would be dormant and thus restorable from the backup.

If you try to restore the Windows partition while you are actively booted into it, MR attempts to perform a kludge whereby it reboots into a PE copy instead of Windows, and then from there it can restore the Windows partition which will at that point be dormant. If successful, it will finish by rebooting once more, back into the restored Windows partition.

Note that MR can only do this reboot-PE-reboot two-step if you had beforehand setup MR to add itself as an option in the BCD boot menu. That’s what the 4th screenshot is reminding you.

Regardless, the 5th screenshot is telling you is that there was a problem trying to do the first reboot-PE part of the process. It’s not indicating a problem with the image, it’s a problem with the kludge.

I’m not sure what the problem was, but the simple solution is to boot from your MR rescue media instead and initiate the restore from there. I always recommend using the rescue media if you need to restore the active Windows partition.

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Thanks for your elaborate answer, dg1261.
You clarified it very well. I was indeed confused about the naming etc.
Yes, I already had MR create the PE boot option. I only added the screenshot to show that I did go into PE-mode.

The puzzling thing to me is, that the (third) ‘Restore Summary’ screenshot shows that although MR identifies the image ID as ‘E0CFAD….’, it fails to find it when in PE-mode. See last screenshot “Searching all local files for Image file ‘E0CFAD….’. It must be the ‘kludge’ you are mentioning.

I will indeed perform a trial restore, booting from the rescue media later.
Cheers

MintDE is my daily driver now. Old friend Win10 keeps spinning in the background

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“The proper way to restore is to boot from the MR “Rescue media” (CD or USB stick)”

You can also use MR to set up a Windows Boot Menu, which will give the option of booting into Windows (the default) or into the rescue environment, which does not start/use Windows.  I have done several restores this way, and they have always worked.

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit 20H2

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TJ

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