Discussion on:

Create a custom recovery image for Windows 8's Refresh your PC tool

It is always a good idea to have a recovery plan for Windows, with Recimg you get a few more options. What is your Windows 8 recovery plan?

...that their products need a rebuild procedure *built in*. Now I've seen everything.

just the ticket!!!

in response to tim.clark, yes, they should; and, they should also realize that if you are sophisticated enough to be dealing with your own virus issue that you have already ruled out recently installed programs, you have done a system restore, you have scanned with the top virus scanners, etc., and that you have come to the conclusion that it is somewhere in the windows system; therefore, perhaps offer an additional option of just refreshing the windows program without disturbing the rest of your computer. just sayin . . .

I discovered this some time ago and it has saved me a whole lot of trouble on several occasions now. I`m Sooooo grateful to the OP who posted it.
Pity theres a need for it though, -I`ve had to "refresh" (re-install) FIVE times now...

.... That Windows had this feature. Too bad it won't work for Windows 7.....

[OK, so that is *ONE* bright spot for Windows 8.]

FYI... this is a very good article... thank you.... I do have a simple question however..

Given I use this procedure to create the Recovery file while the system is working fine but later the drive fails, is it possible to 'recovery' from the recovery file that was created? I assume it is but will there be additional steps that's needed?
I do back up our data on a daily basis so I also assume that I would have some additional work to recover it.

Joneszee

...I am not sure that you can. A refresh operation is designed to fix an unstable system, not a completely dead hard drive. To recover from that type of catastrophe, you would want to restore from a system image, which you could do from a Recovery Drive and a set of image discs.

I have not tried this, but If I am not mistaken, I assume that the Refresh your PC tool requires that a working copy of Windows 8 be present on the hard disk in order for the tool to run. So, assuming that you have a backup copy of your custom recovery image, that would mean that you would have to put in a new hard disk, install Windows 8, restore your data, copy your custom recovery image to the hard disk, and then run the Refresh your PC tool... Whew! But if it were to work, it could save you from having to re-install and reconfigure all of your applications from scratch.

When I get some time, I'll have to experiment with this to see if it is possible.

Great article as usual,Thank you.

Why do I get this error?
"The recovery image cannot be written.
Error Code - 0x80070001"
Any help would be appreciated.

A free program like Macrium Reflect can make a full image of your system whenever you want via a graphical interface and store it practically any where you want. The image can be restored quickly and easily from that single backup file, even to a brand new hard drive.

Why is Refresh better than this? What are it's improvements that make it worth using?

John

...Macrium Reflect, but from the description on their site it sounds similar to the Windows System Image, but probably more powerful. In any case, MR would make a full backup of your system at that point in time whereas Refresh will make a copy of your data at that exact moment and then basically re-install the OS and then put all your data back. Because it doesn't actually move your data from one disk to another, Refresh your PC is very fast when compared to restoring from a system image. What makes it worth using is that it comes with the OS.

Now, if you have already using something like MR, you'll just have to do some comparisons and see what works best for you.

I guess it's partly a personal preference and the fact that I don't have a huge amount of data to deal with. Making a drive image, which Macrium Reflect does, is not inconvenient, so that's my backup choice for now.

I really appreciate the quality of your articles and the clarity with which you write.

John

C:\WINDOWS\system32>recimg /createimage c:\refresh
Source OS location: C:
Recovery image path: c:\refresh\CustomRefresh.wim
Creating recovery image. Press [ESC] to cancel.
Initializing
100%
Creating snapshot
27%
The recovery image cannot be written.
Error Code - 0x80070001

Have you tried running ErrorChecking with both boxes checked ( or in a Command box, CHKDSK d: /R where d: is the letter for the drive you are using for the image).

If there are errors on the drive you can get this sort of message. If you are writing to an external drive, try a different drive and see if that makes a difference.

John

I was interested in the article as I am trying to create an image for tablets and wondered how would this work if I wanted to image and restore a number of tablets. I would have to run a program to change the sid wouldn't I? Any suggestions.

It is not a good idea, no matter how well documented, to tell people to store the image on the same drive!
Recimg and and Win7 backup and Restore can all be reliably replaced with disk2vhd (a SysInternals product).
The expertise in selecting the point-in-time and off-disk location should not vary.

Would this be a viable option for creating a custom image for distributing on multiple computers with the same hardware?

Hello, Great article! I have found a piece of software the uses reclmg and adds a simple interface and a manager to organize the images. Kinda takes the fun out of the manual approach and all of the satisfaction of doing it yourself !
https://www.slimwareutilities.com/recimg_manager.php

I have a totally new Windows 8 system & I got it set up in a stable state with a minimum amount of apps. I then grabbed an image using the RecImg tool & attempted a Refresh Your PC operation. It went through it's steps & then rebooted. On restart, however, it seemed to have forgotten all of the Windows 8 Start screen links & applications that I had on there. I then restarted the machine & everything came back, but only after I got a message that there was an error in the refresh in that nothing on the system had changed. Seeing that I then decided to make a couple of changes on the system ... I imported all of my 25,000-some-odd songs into Media Payer & installed WinZip. I ran Refresh Your PC again figuring it would at least restore without WinZip installed, but I got the same results as described above. Do I have a corrupted image? What should I do to get something that will restore?

...wording from the error message it is difficult to say what went wrong. I suppose that it could be a corrupt image...

You might want to try again. But first, get your Windows 8 system set up in a stable state with a minimum amount of apps, then create a complete system image . That way if the Refresh Your PC operation with your custom recovery images your fails again, you will at least be able to return to your stable state. See this article:

Restore Windows 8 with System Image Recovery
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/window-on-windows/restore-windows-8-with-system-image-recovery/7464

If it fails again, then it is a good possibility that you have a corrupted custom recovery image and may want to create a new image custom recovery using the RecImg tool.

well explained.