Problem With System Restore on My Cloned Drives

[RRTRACKS via WindowsKB.com]

Recently I replaced the drives on my PC by cloning.The new drives boot the OS
system without errors. All the partitions and associated files appeared to be
fine, and I have not had any problems running any of the programs moved to
the new drives. One thing that really surprised me is Windows did not require
to be activated on the new drives. WOW! As I am having a problem I will make
that a wow!

For some reason the cookies associated with IE did not transfer to the new
drives. This is not important to me but may give a clue as to the problem of
concern.

Upon trying to run System Restore from Help, shortly after this transfer the
following error message was displayed. “System Restore Application has
encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
â€

The error log lists the following:
Faulting application rstrui.exe, version 5.1.2600.2180, faulting module
srrstr.dll, version 5.1.2600.2180, fault address 0x00009826.




Clicking on the “System Restore†tab on the System Properties Menu results in
the following message: An exception occurred while trying to run “C:\Windows\
system32\shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL SYSDM.CPL,Systemâ€

Before placing this post a search on this board for a solution was made. The
methods given for reinstalling System Restore by using sr.inf to do an
install worked fine until Windows threw a curve ball at me after the last
step. It wants a file named srfame.mmf. All the files on my hard drive and
original installation disc used with the Browse button for selection resulted
in a, “Installation Failed†message.

The original OS installed on this PC was Windows XP Home SP1. As it has been
updated to SP2 using Windows update I do not have the file that was used to
do that update.

Any suggestions or even guesses about how to fix this problem would be
appreciated.

Thanks,

Rich

 

[Paul Randall]

What exactly do you mean by 'replaced the drives on my PC by cloning'?
Using software like Norton Ghost, or Acronis True Image could have truely
cloned your old drives, but for Norton Ghost, how 'truely cloned' it is
depends on the options used -- I don't know much about True Image.
Hopefully you still have the old drives and have not messed with them since
replacing them.

-Paul Randall

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi Rich,

If the srframe.mmf file can not be located, browse to
C:\Windows\System32\Restore folder.

It may be necessary to browse back to the i386 folder to complete the reinstall.

How to reinstall System Restore in Windows XP:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/reinstall.html

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org

 

[RRTRACKS via WindowsKB.com]

To all,

The problem with System Restore (SR) described in the post above has been
resolved. Exactly how this happened I do not know.

The procedure for running sr.inf was the one given in the link by Bert Kinney
given above. Even after getting the “Installation Failed†message I rebooted
the computer with the hope that MS had lied. It would not be the first time.
My hope this had happened did not pan out.

For no reason in particular last night another attempt to run SR was made.
Much to my surprise it worked. It was found a system restore point had been
created. Maybe the automated process, that created this restore point did
something, I could not in getting the SR program to start.

Since all my previous restore points had been cleared, it seems likely the sr.
inf installation program might have been more successful than originally
believed. With limited testing SR on my PC was found to be fully functional
in that it could set a restore point, restore a previous set point and return
to the created set point.

The Cloning of disk drives may not have been the cause of the problem I was
having, as people do this all the time without this problem occurring.
However, going from two pairs of PATA drives configured as Raid O arrays to
two single SATA drives with all the possible variables this entails might
have thrown a monkey wrench into the process. Add in the reason the drives
were being replaced was because of a few bad cluster reports (not on the
drive holding the OS) and the range of possibilities of what went wrong
widens.

Paul,

I used Seagate’s DiscWizard (DW) to copy the OS partition and Norton’s Ghost
2006 to copy the balance of the partitions. There were not any setting I
could find (Including MBR) that would successfully copy the boot partition my
system had with the version of Ghost that was used. The reason Ghost was used
to copy the balance of the partitions was because it could and was much
faster than DW.

Bert,

Your efforts here are greatly appreciated. Without them I would not have
stumbled upon the solution (whatever it was) that occurred. A couple points
of information you might want to bookmark for future reference follow. The
only copies of the srframe.mmf file on my computer were located in the
Windows\system32\Restore and \dllcache directories. Attempting to use the
“Browse†button to use these files during the sr.inf install did not appear
to work.

Once SR started working on my PC additional occurrences of this file were not
found. The last date modified of the two files having this name on my
computer is Aug 29, 2002.

Other sources for errors:

For about three years I have been running Windows and Norton Security Update
along with a virus scan by means of scheduled tasks every Tuesday night. This
should eliminate one likely source for this error.

Me, anything and everything is possible there. If I ever find there was
something done on my part to have created this mess it will be posted here.

Rich

 

[Paul Randall]

Glad to hear that things are working.
I know that older versions of Ghost don't properly copy Vista's MBR - I
thought that Norton might have fixed that. I don't know if an upgrade is
available that does. I use the DOS versions of Ghost and MBRWiz on a
bootable CD to wind up with a good copy with a good MBR.

-Paul Randall

 

[Bert Kinney]

Thanks for the feedback Rich.


Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org