Windows 10 system image recovery - HP Laptop

[mwc104]

A bit stuck on this one. Someone brought me their HP x360 11.6" laptop because their touchscreen quit working. I created a system image and then ran the recovery using that image within windows and it built it as it was. So, my image works perfect.

Instead of doing the Windows 10 "Reset this PC", I booted into the factory system recovery and ran that.......well, the entire recovery runs, but it fails after it boots referring to I2C HID Device failed. That's the touchscreen. The strange thing is, it boots to the Administrator account and displays the recovery failure window and a command prompt behind it stating the OS is 8. I can ctrl+alt+del and bring up task manager and it shows all the services running for a Windows profile that is booted up (McAfee and other stuff running), but it won't let me get beyond that recovery failure window. It always restarts and loops.

I tried the System Image Recovery option, and it wants me to create a repair disk (which it doesn't have a dvd drive but I could hookup a 3.5" drive externally with sata drive tools), but I'm not sure it will work.

My question is, should I wait until I can get home to my blank DVD's to try the repair disk option, or could I install a fresh retail Windows 10 Home image I have and then run the system image recovery and point to my image I made? I don't see why that couldn't work, but I thought I would see if anyone here has any objection...

 

[wpgwpg]

You can make a bootable USB flash drive for repairs, why not do that? The SATA DVD hookup should work, and I've used USB connected CD/DVD drives, although whether you can boot from them depends on the make, model, and BIOS/UEFI settings.

 

[mwc104]

You can make a bootable USB flash drive for repairs, why not do that? The SATA DVD hookup should work, and I've used USB connected CD/DVD drives, although whether you can boot from them depends on the make, model, and BIOS/UEFI settings.

This laptop isn't giving me the option for usb repair disk for some reason, only DVD. And I don't have any other Windows 10 machines around my work to make one off them

 

[mwc104]

Well...........how does one work around the secure boot crap and restore an image? To boot to my USB Windows installation image, I have to disable secure boot and enable legacy. I can get to the Windows 10 recovery part but when i select my image it says it was done on an EFI system and the current system is BIOS.

Never encountered this problem before

 

[wpgwpg]

I use Macrium Reflect or Easeus Todo Backup. Both have free (for non-commercial use) versions. I've been using these several years and never had a problem with either.

 

[mwc104]

Update-

Created a new Windows 10 USB drive and booted to the recovery portion. This time, it let me select my system image that I made (and tested last night before all this happened) but it gives me a Volume Shadow Copy error. Apparently this is common with v1709. I know the image is good, so I'm going to load Win10 using the USB a overwrite the C: and not delete any others and then try to apply the image within Win10. Hope this works

Update 2-

Still not working. Just don't understand! Never seen anything like it.......how does my first run at installing the image as a test work fine, and now I can't get it to work at all after attempting the HP factory recovery and it being incomplete? I've installed Win10 system images on new drives to replace a crashed one with zero issues. Ugh!!

I've never ever had to do this, but I ordered recovery media from HP tonight. Have a feeling there's something in there tied to my image keeping me from being able to get it to work. Maybe it will do me some justice, I dunno.......

 

[mwc104]

I'm back to share what I found and hopefully this helps others in the same boat.

I created a new bootable USB drive with Windows 10 from the Microsoft MediaCreationTool which booted fine with secure boot on. I installed a fresh copy of 10 on the laptop and made sure to delete every partition listed. After installation, I created a .WIM file from my .VHDX following instructions from this site:

https://superuser.com/questions/791855/how-to-complete-restore-using-just-a-vhdx-file

One thing missing from that guide is on the last step "Dism..." you need to run Format C:\ and after that is done, do the "Dism..." step. I finally have this machine running from the image I created using the Windows 10 System Recovery Image creator.

There's quite a bit of info I didn't share originally because it wasn't important, but this is related to Windows version 1709 and creating backup images with Windows 10 system recovery image. 1709 system recovery image is apparently broken giving Volume Shadow Copy Service errors when trying to load your image.