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Unless I’m completely misunderstanding what you’ve written, you have set up a backup job in Windows Backup (by clicking on “Change settings” in the Backup and Restore Center control panel), [/Quote]

Sorry Bethel95. There is a complete misunderstanding between us.
If I click on “Change Settings” Windows starts a process that hangs eternally, because it can not find any back-up medium, even not the 2 hard drives.
So all of your questions don’t apply, because I can not configure the windows back-up in the first place. That what I meant by saying “I cant start it”.
It is true that I don’t care about Windows Back-up, there are a lot of alternatives. But I described this problem, because I hope it tells something about my real problem: The restore-point proces that does not work and makes all installations hanging for half an hour.

The “repair-install” of Win7 didn’t solve anything.

I’m so glad I made a good recovery image first, even when ik took weeks to find a program that worked with my PC.
I did the repair install. afterwards I had to install a validation update. This update hung for long time. I grew suspicious and checked the old problems: and indeed : – 1 A restore point can not be made (because the shadow-image can not be made) – 2 Impossible to start the back-up program in windows – 3 impossible to make a system-copy using windows. So I gained NOTHING by doing the repair install, only lost the validation and many updates. I better replace the entire partition with the image from Clonezilla.
(side-remark: the app. recommended by Bethel95 is only a a gui, the process is the same non-working one.)

For the moment all advices are exempted. I have no idea anymore What to do ???

I have (finally) good news too: I have a working recovery CD and an recoverable Image of C. Clonezilla 2.0.1.15 did the job. The GUI is a bit hardcore for me, but simply following the recommended options all the time, it works. During startup Clonezilla gives a realtime-log (i.s.o. the blank screen of all the other programs) in which I saw several warning, but the elements in my PC-configurations that Clonezilla does not like, proved to be non-critical for this Linux-program.

Before Clonezilla I have tried DiskWizard from Seagate. It is a Acronis product. It did not work, but provided an log of something of 30 lines, of which I don’t understand any. The Error part was like: ” Not filesynch could mount root. tried Romfs. / Kernel-Panic – not synchronizing VSF. Unable to mount rootfs on unknown Block (1,0) / Pid 1 Comm: Swapper not tainted. ”
The computer did not react on the mouse or keyboard, so I couldn’t make a screen-shot of this secret language.

I go now for the repair-install after I got my recoverable image of C in the end.

Some questions:

[*]Are you using Windows Backup to make a file-by-file backup or an image backup?
[*]What backup storage location did you specify in your backup settings?

The answer is twice : NO, BECAUSE IT DOES NOT START – SEE MY PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
Concerning the Restore point question. Otherwise than the questions about how and when to create a restore point, in the tread you mentioned , my Win7 NEVER created one by all means to start it (and hangs for 1/2 an hour if I try. )
I will try to use the Restore Point Manager from Windows-club, but if it uses the same process, it will hang also. We will see.
Anyway a work-around to make a restore-point, won’t solve the problem that any installment takes more than half an hour, because of the hanging restore-point process of win 7 itself. So I will still need the repair-installment anyway.
See more news in the next post

Thanks Joe and Roderunner . I made a Win7-SP1 Dutch “all-version” DVD. I feel confident to use it, even if the recover of image of C does not work yet. More news follows.
I got an email from Macrium about the “redeploy” function of there professional version: Reinstalling drivers in the boot-configuration of windows, sounds like a possible solution. But I suppose that the repair-install too will do exactly that – if that is the problem.

Dear Joe, Beside the data I tried to make an image of C too. Because I have for the upgrade only a “family-pack” of 3 upgrades that are used all three, so I’m afraid To have problems with the key. Second the pack is without SP1, so it did not work and I got from this forum a link too an Win7-sp1 installation dvd, but that is for Dell-oem’s , so than I worry even more about my key. And so came the side-path about image-making – and the failing of Macrium and Acronis 2010 – in this tread about restore points
I found Langa’s article about the repair-install that learn me that I can use my old win7 upgrade dvd after uninstalling SP1. It will take a lot of updating afterwards, but I prefer that to trying the dell-oem-iso.

Yes that was one of the first things to try. Important is maybe that Windows NEVER EVER made a restore-point, even after the first fresh installment on a clean new drive (the XP of my old computer first and than an upgrade to win7 (with key)) the updates that were than done, could not make a restore-point !! There was no third-party installed at all and also – when I turn of all 3th party services now it doesn’t help. Ferdinand

Dear Joe, It was good to try that again. After half a hour it stops on its own with an error message: Restore point could not be made. Time out making a shadow-copy. Error code (0x81000101). Please try again.
I had forgotten about this error-message, but it was that error code, that guided me (3 month ago !) to the checks described in the opening message of this tread.
Now I checked again, that all involved services ( Volume Shadow Copy / RPC / RPC Endpoint Mapper / DCOM Server Process Launcher / Windows Backup ) were started (automatically).
Also today there is no mention of any problem in the System logbook and I used also the log search function for “restore” (and for the Dutch equivalent “herstel”) result: nothing found.
I have put the Error Reporting Service now also on “automatic”.
Ferdinand

Dear Joe, rthanks for your continued attention. No there are no error messages, simply the program tries and tries endlessly. After 10 or 15 minutes, I shut down the system. In the events-logs I see only the warnings that windows was shut down while still running a program. When I install something, he also tries to make a restorepoint and after long trying, he skipps it and does the installment nevertheless. So I mostly do installments and updates overnight.

Dear Woody, on my pc’s it is the other way around: Firefox asks every time permission to start Java, and Chrome uses Java without any question!! (both updates to the last version).

Dear Joe, the answer is NO! There has never been created any restore-point on this pc by any procedure. Although every recommended check has been done. And windows Back-up does not see any medium for the back-up – although the Bios and Windows explorer do.

Hi Joe and Medico,

Indeed deleting restore-points with CCleaner is only done in a complete separate tool. In my case from the first day on there have never been any restore-points, that could be deleted, that is just my problem.
I used the very latest version of Macrium, It does not provide any details, it just tells that it won’t start up. I have no idea what to investigate, as the bios is seemingly normal.

Dear Joep517, thanks for your rethinking.
The space for system-restore I have put to 10GB. I cleanup with Ccleaner, that is reasonable safe I suppose. The recovery CD of Macrium boots, but failed to start (I/O error), as failed Acronis 2010, only the Acronis 2012 CD works on my PC, and I want to have a working recovery procedure, before doing finally a repair-install, that in the end should — hopefully — solve my original problem of no restore-points, nor windows back-ups. Does this answer your questions ?

Continued: I concluded, if acronis has a problem, then it is maybe a hardware or bios problem, so I went to the hardware shop. They checked: Acronis 2010: failure. Acronis 2012 plus: works fine. Bios and hardware are oké. They made for me an image of C, but I have no recovery-cd of acronis 2012 myself, so I’m still affraid of doing a repair-installment. An this seems to me still the way to advance.

To everybody, I think the problem is getting more clear. The back-up and recovery CD I got from Roderunner works fine on my other Win7 PC. But on my new PC, I have a list of probably related problems: A No Restorepoints can be made; B The windows back-up program won’t work, because it finds no back-up medium; C The Macrium recovery CD boots, but won’t start because of an I/O error; D The Acronis True Image program boots, but won’t start up because “no hard drive detected”.
On the other hand the BIOS and Windows have no problems in seeing and using these hard drives (1 on Sata, partitionated “C” & “D”, the second “F” for back-ups, on the other sata controller together with the DVD-drive).
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in it”.