Windows Vista Vista recovery/backup/restore issue

[becranfill]

Hello,

I am new to this forum and hope you can help me please. I'll try to be brief and to the point.Just bought a new computer with Vista. It crashed yesterday and was advised to "start from scratch" and use recovery tool. Just before doing this it asked me if I wanted to backup my data. Of course I did on an external hard drive. Today I have successfully windows and running and it's new again. Now I'm ready to restore my back up files.
When I use the Vista back up file utility, it doesn't "see" the backup files on my external hard drive. When I go into explorer I can see the backup files on my external hard drive. When I click on the application file (it says it is a "restorewiz application"), it throws me into recovery manager and says, "the file restore wizard helps you restore files that you backed up earlier". So far so good. Then it says "insert the last disk. Please insert the latest disk and continue the restore wizard." There is no option to tell it to look on my external hard drive.

What am I missing? All I want to do is to restore these files which I can see on my external hard drive. They are in the folder "MINWINPC" with file extensions of .fpw. Thanks for any help.

Bruce

 

[Unregistered]

Solution

The solution to this problem is:

add another "0" infront of all the files from 10 on...
backup.010.fbw - becomes - backup.0010.fbw
backup.011.fbw - becomes - backup.0011.fbw
backup.012.fbw - becomes - backup.0012.fbw
and so on. Then run the .exe file that is in the folder and the recovery manager should start the recovery process. A big thanks to troy at the tech republic forums!

 

[Unregistered]

vista restore back-up sol'n

unfortunatley I didn't HAve any files that the soln applied to, I have files FBW.001- fbw.007, can't get them to restore, none of the sol'n posted elsewhere seem to work, please help,, wifes pics on the ext drive.

Murray

 

[Unregistered]

Is the first file you have in the folder a .exe file? If so, have you tried running it?

 

[Unregistered]

Yes I've tried renaming it as an exe file running it as is; tried moving the files to my hard drive; nothing seems to work yet.

Murray

 

[Unregistered]

What happens when you try running the .exe file?

 

[Unregistered]

nothing

Nothing happens. Have run through all the steps. Looks like everything jams up and the program just hangs there. Anymore thoughts

 

[Unregistered]

I haven't seen any other solution so far. For me, when I ran the .exe file, it took about 10 minutes to run. Like you described, it just hangs there. But for me, it eventually worked.

There is another thread here: Vista backup files .fbw?

I created this thread and the solution was given by the poster Troy. He seems to have knowledge about this problem. But so far, the only solution is the one he posted about renaming the files.

 

[davidhol]

HP Recovery Manager

I am just now running the recovery mgr. but the backup files are 84 GB and the recovery mgr is trying to stuff everything into a new dir called "System Recovery files" on my C drive (50 GB total but only about 15 GB free) and of course my drive is getting full and I presume it will stop without actually restoring things to where they belong.Yep. Just terminated with an error.

What is needed is to restore the system files, application programs and files and place the system in an operable state. I'm pretty upset that HP thinks this is a production quality solution!

 

[johnpascoe26]

my back up issue

Had the same thing. Would not see my usb g drive. under any ciscumstances.
My back up set were stored in a .VHD format. Found out that this id Virtual Hard Drive.
Downloaded Windows server 2000 Virtual Hard Drive. loaded Windows XP on the virtual hard drive.
Opend my USB drive containing the .VHD files. Unpacked and copy/paste the missing files to another drive, and pasted into the empty drive D.
This I might add took 4 days of research and fiddling to mount drives in the virtual hard drive.
Not for the feint hearted.
John

 

[Unregistered]

Gracias...!!

Just when I was about to give up and thinking I had lost all my files I thought about Googleing for a solution.

Must have writeen the right keywords because it brought me here and asn I write this the Recovery Manager has started to restore my files into my HD.

MUCHAS MUCHAS GRACIAS...!!

A very grateful user from Colombia, South America...!!

TROY@ YOU DA MAN
XD

 

[Unregistered]

I am having this same problem.
When i go through my computer i have no problem getting to my j drive and openning the back up folder which is .fbw files. The first one is an app but after 10-15 min of hanging there, the only option that it gives me is to restore from a cd/dvd.

I also tried going throush start>accessories> backup status and configuration. But when i follow the instructions, the restore program says "windows was not able to find any backup sets on J:\" even though i can find .fbw files in 'my computer.'
Why would it back up in a way that it can't restore.

Anyway please help i have a little over 7 months of stuff on this computer that i can't loose.

I just posted the message above this. I gues i didn't really listen to Tom's solution at first when i should have. I feel stupid but i did what he said to a T even though it went until 87 but its working right now.

Thank you Tom you really stepped up to the plate on this.

And I am definately with tidoo2001 lets get that class action. This is gotta be the sixth or seventh problem I've had with vista. Why would they release something like this without testing it and gettin gout the kinks. I mean, you can't even buy a new computer without it and it is just one headache after another



Anyway,

THANKS AGAIN TOM

 

[Hawaii]

I have appreciated greatly what others have shared and I long to get to the point of recovering my data. Maybe I'm just doing something wrong, but having gone through the process, when I click on the backup1.exe file, it asks me if I trust the file (really!) and when I click on it I get nothing. The program won't start. It's like the exe file doesn't do anything. Am I missing something?

Thanks for the help.

Drew

 

[Unregistered]

After having the same problem, I just can't believe that putting an extra zero in front of the 10's column could have solved this restore problem, but there you go, it was as simple as that.

I am extremely grateful to the user that that posted this solution.

Thanks again

Dave

 

[Unregistered]

I have successfully restored Vista backups after much frustration - similar problems to those discussed here.
My solution was to be patient when the restore process starts. You will see a window which shows a progress meter - It stays at 0% for a long time. In my case I gave up too soon. Then I transferred the exe and fbw files to another computer and tried again. This time I decided to wait forever if necessary to see what would happen. It took about an hour before the recovery actually started. I think the reason is that the recovery file is so large.
If I had been more patient the first time on the original computer I'm sure it would have worked.

There was a problem trying to do the restore a second time from the same computer after closing the recovery process the first time. That was why I had to try it on a second computer.