Backup of an bilingual Vista

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I have some problems with backup and restore of different partitions at
once. Right now my computer has a Vista German Version on Partition
C:/ and a Vista English Version on Partition D:/. The bootmanager lets me
choose which version to use at startup.

Now I want to make one backup of the complete system, both
partitions. They should both be fully restorable afterwards, including the
bootmanager. There is an unused partition E:/ just for this backup purpose.

How can I accomplish that? Every time I try it the bootmanager gives me an
error message in one of the vista partitions, which can be helped by using
the repair function of the original vista boot-disc. This of course is not
the way it should be after restoring the whole thing.

I use Acronis Image 2009 Home.

Any help would be gladly appreciated - thanks in advance!

[bodgy]

Do you get this message when you try to make the image, after you make the image or when you try and restore?

Are you using 2009 English or German version?

I can understand a problem when you restore, but I don't get that problem imaging a drive with W7 and 2 * XP's on it. The W7 boot process takes over the XP ones, so as it uses the same BCD system as Vista I assume this part operates the same way.

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I get this message after I restored the image. Right in the bootmanager, when I choose the english vista version.

I tried 3 different ways of doing those images:
1) Vista German only (which is located on C:\)
2) Vista English only (which is located on D:\)
3) both partitions together

Either way, after restoring any one of those I get the error mentioned above. BTW, installing Vista German AND English in ONE partition did not work at all, thus I have installed them on different partitions.

I am using Acronis True Image Home 2009 German.

It's a pure Vista machine, no XP or W7.

[K0LO]

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Your error messages after restoration indicate that the pointers in Vista's Boot Configuration Database (BCD) are incorrect after restoring an image. If you used Vista setup to create both Vista partitions then they were created with Vista's new default offset of 2048 sectors between the start of the disk and the start of the first partition.

True Image uses the older, established partitioning standard offset of 63 sectors. When it restores a partition it restores to an offset of 63-sectors. Doing this will invalidate the BCD pointers that refer to your two partitions. TI 2009 includes code to fix the BCD pointers on a simple, single-boot Vista system. However, it doesn't always work for multi-boot systems.

Once you get the BCD repaired and both Vista versions boot correctly you can make another image. This new image and any future images will restore correctly.

If you have one of the Vista systems booting correctly now, you can edit the BCD to fix it so that the second Vista will boot. We can help you with that if you'd like. If you want to do this, boot into the working Vista and determine the drive letters (X and Y) for each of the two:

Vista (German) = Drive X:
Vista (English) = Drive Y:

Post the values of X and Y. From your prior message they appear to be X=C: and Y=D: when booted into the German version, correct? It is important to note whatever they are in the operating system that is used to do the next step.

Then, start an administrative command prompt. Right-click on Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator. Enter the command bcdedit and post the output in your next reply.

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Thank you for your detailed informations but now both Vista versions boot correctly. Which steps I have to do that making an image which restores correctly works?

[K0LO]

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No further steps are necessary. An image of your current setup or future images of your current setup will restore correctly. The realignment of the partition offsets was a one-time event. Now that it has occurred and now that you have corrected the BCD entries to make the system boot correctly, there should not be any further issues.

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But before I did the last backup both Vista Versions works and after the backup they didn't work.

Which settings should I configure that the Backup now works?

[K0LO]

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How many times have you restored this setup with TrueImage?

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Thank you for your help. Now our backup restores correctly. We've checked the determination of the partitions and than we did a full backup of partition C:/ (German) and D:/ (English) and it works.