Complete System Recovery using DriveImage XML The healthy state of a system is in constant jeopardy each and every day. Viruses, Hardware Malfunctions and User Error are just some of the potential threats facing your PC. At some point it is very possible that your Windows operating system will become unavailable for any number of reasons. If you have used DriveImage XML to backup your system state to an alternate location from where your Windows operating system is stored, chances are very good your system will make a full recovery :) Before proceeding, please make sure you have created a BartPE Boot CD as described in the Obtaining & Installing BartPE and Installing BartPE Plug-Ins & Burning sections Insert your newly created BartPE boot disk into your cdrom drive and reboot your computer. Depending on the setup of your computer you may need to press a certain keystroke to enable booting from your cdrom drive. Many modern computers have this feature enabled by default, and simply require that a bootable CD be present in the cdrom drive when the pc is turned on (please refer to your computer documenation if you are experiencing problems booting from cdrom).

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If you created the BartPE boot disk properly and have enabled the booting off of your cdrom properly, you will be presented with the BartPE boot screen, with the first prompt asking if you wish to enable Network Support. Given our image is located on an external USB drive; we do not need to able networking at this time, so please click No

We will first begin with partitioning our hard drive with SwissKnife. Swissknife recommends that BartPE be configured to have a screen resolution of 1024x768.. To configure BartPE to 1024x768, click Go - System - Display - Screen Resolution - 1024 x 768

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To launch the SwissKnife plugin you installed on the boot disk, click Go in the lower left hand corner, click Programs and click CompuApps SwissKnife V3

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On the SwissKnife menu you will see two attached hard drives (Primary Master and Primary Slave). As you click each of the drives, pay attention to what is displayed on the right hand side of the screen underneath the volume label. You will note that if you followed my advice and labeled your Drive C and Drive E: with volume labels you will see them listed here. Immediately because of this, drive_c is identified as the Primary master (with our Drive E as the Primary Slave given the DRIVEIMAGE volume label). If the destination hard drive for the backup image to be restored on is an existing hard drive that you will simply do a restore on, I suggest you delete and recreate the partition before continuing with the DriveImage XML restore. To delete and recreate the partition, click Primary Master, click drive_c partition and click Delete. If you are restoring your backup image to a brand new hard drive that has never had an Operating System on it, you can skip this step and go directly to the creating a partition step

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Click Yes to confirm you wish to proceed with deleting the drive partition. I wish to repeat that your particular configuration may be different then what I am describing in this tutorial, and ask that you feel confident in your understanding about your current and existing environment before attempting to delete or modify your hard drive partition

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Select from the drop down box the Partition Type Primary. Select from the drop down box the File System NTFS. Define a volume label in the Volume Label field (I suggest drive_c if this is your Drive C: ) .Place a tick mark in the box labeled Set this partition to Active. Click Create

It only takes a few moments to complete, and when it does, you will have a fresh partition table, ready for DriveImage XML to restore your backup image onto. To exist the CompuApps SwissKnife application, click 'X' in the upper right hand corner or click File - Exit from the SwissKnife toolbar

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With the destination hard drive properly partitioned, DriveImage can now be used to restore the backup image. To launch DriveImage XML click Go - Programs - DriveImage XML

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On the DriveImage XML main menu click Restore

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Click the drive labeled drive_c and click Next

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Click on the browse icon

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Click My Computer and double click the drive labeled DRIVEIMAGE (this is the drive which we stored our backup image earlier)

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Click drive_c.xml and click Open (This is the backup image we created earlier)

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Click Next

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Select a drive which the backup image will be restored to. Because we volume labeled each of our hard drives earlier and because we know we want to restore the backup image to our Drive C:, click the drive which has the label drive_c. Click Next

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Click on Next to begin the restore operation

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A confirmation dialog box will appear asking you to type in a confirmation word. Type DISK0#1 and click OK. Your particular confirmation word might be different depending on the drive # and partition you will be restoring. Note the confirmation warning is here for a reason. Make absolutely sure you are confident you have identified the destination drive correctly before proceeding, to avoid overwriting one of your hard drives in your system with the incorrect data.

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When the restore is complete click Finish. After clicking the Finish button, remove the CD from
your cdrom drive and turn your system off and on. If the restore was successful, your PC will
boot up and it ones did prior to the failure and you will be back to a fully functioning PC :)

I wish to add that if your PC becomes unavailable, it is not always obvious if the reason for the
failure is a software problem or a hardware problem. If it is a software problem, inserting a
BartPE boot disk, rebuilding the disk partitions with SwissKnife and restoring your backup
image back to the failed hard drive should repair the failure. However if the system failed
because of a physical failure of the hard drive, you need to replace the drive first with a new
one and follow the restore procedure. If you try to restore a backup image to the original drive
which failed and are experiencing errors or even begin to hear ticks and rattling from your hard
drive, it probably means you need to replace the drive first before a fully system restore can be
done.