Recent Horror Story...How did TI9 do?

I thought I should post this so anyone reading this will perhaps be saved the same horrific experience that I recently endured. I welcome any comments.

I have an HP Pavilion. The OS (Windows XP) came pre-installed, of course, as many new computers do. The recovery software was located on a partition on the same disk drive, labeled "D:". My user partition on the drive was labeled "C:". Somehow, I was being more intelligent that I should have been in attempting to correct a pesky problem in Outlook Express 6. (I couldn't get any of my emails to print--when I tried to do so, the program crashed and shut down).

Okay, so to make a long story even longer, I was unable to correct the problem and thought I should use the system recovery feature to roll the computer back to its original state in hopes of correcting my OE6 problem. First of all, DON'T ANYONE DO THAT. IT IS A REALLY DUMB THING TO DO.

It definitely rolled back the settings and corrected my printing problem. HOWEVER, while all of my data still existed, none of my programs worked anymore, even though the program files were all there. All kinds of error messages came up. (DUH, MY WINDOWS SYSTEM FILES HAD ALL BEEN CHANGED TO THEIR ORIGINAL STATE.)

Somehow, I then managed to mess up the partitions on the drive and had to reinstall the Windows System Files again using my Windows Recovery Disks. Of course, all of my data was gone by this point and I was in more hot water than I could bear.

I then thought I would be really smart by restoring my complete image file created in TI9. I used my Acronis boot CD and restored my full image. To my complete surprise, all of the data was restored, and yet all of my programs continued to not work (just as it had been before). Thank heaven and all who live there that all I have to do now is the pains-taking process of reloading all of my program software. At least all of the data was saved.

I think the moral of the story is, there are some instances where TI9 cannot save your skin--particularly if you wipe out your partitions and have to re-load the entire OS using your system recovery disks. Perhaps this is because the OS is not the same as it was when I made the original image backup?

I really don't know, but I do know that I don't ever want to have to go through that again. I wonder whether the whole nightmare could have been avoided had I backed up the "D:" partition as well as the "C:".

 

I have an HP m7170n that uses the same partition scheme - C is the OS, data etc and D is (was) an HP recovery partition only,

First, you are rarely if ever going to find a rational or time-effective use for the HP recovery partition. It will do just as you discovered and simply butcher your programs.
I used the HP option to create the seperate recovery CDs - I also copied the entire (hidden) HP folder on C to another CD just to be sure I have all drivers etc.

I found that the only practical use for the HP recovery on CD or the partition is the advanced options, completely restore the drive (and partitions) to factory config. Of course this erases and resets any custom partitions and all data - so have it backed up previously.

Once restored to factory you can then remove the HP recovery D partition (since you have the same on CD now) and resize it (using whatever 3rd party app) for a data partition - place documents, etc here.
Then run TI to create a full backup of C - your small OS and programs partition, and for any future problems you can skip the awful HP mess and just quickly restore your C partition with all programs working.

 

You didn't say how you created your "complete image file". If you imaged ONLY the C partition, then that might account for what happened when you Restored the Image.

You have to Image the entire hard drive - put the check mark next to the drive name - including the D partition.

What the Wolf said makes good sense. But at least you have your data intact.