Complete PC Restore Will Be Enhanced with Windows Vista Service Pack 1

Complete PC Restore is one area of Windows Vista that will be enhanced with the release of Service Pack 1 in the second half of 2007. The Windows Core File Services team revealed that the first service pack for Windows Vista will address shortcomings in the Complete PC Restore technology.

One of the current issues faced by Vista users is the fact that the Windows Recovery Environment (RE) fails to identify the external USB hard drives even though the drives were present at the time the backup was created. The actual problem lies with the fact that Windows RE does not have the driver for the hard drive. In this case, the driver has to be loaded manually with Drvload.exe, in X:windowssystem32 in Windows RE.

"Drvload.exe needs to be run on the .inf file of the driver. (You can find more information about Drvload.exe here.) In Windows Vista SP1, we are adding the option to load drivers from Complete PC Restore to simplify this procedure," revealed a member of the Windows Core File Services team.

There are however some limitations associated with the hardware and you should be aware of them when you use Complete PC Restore. First off, as long ass all the drivers are in place, there are no actual restrictions as to the interface.

Still, users will find that they are unable to restore a 64-bit backup to a 32-bit machine, although the other way around works like a charm with the only problem that Windows Vista will run as a 32-bit operating system on 64-bit architecture.

Additionally, users will find that they are also limited when it comes to restoring a Complete PC Backup image to a smaller drive than the initial drive in the backup. The size of the backup in relation to the storage space available on the new disk is irrelevant.

"The backup can be restored only if at least the same number of hard drives are present, and each disk is at least as big as the disk it replaces," the Windows Core File Services team representative added. The team even provided a guide with the Vista Complete PC Restore limitations when it comes to the disk size, just click the image at the bottom to access it.

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