Restoring System Image W7

Perhaps I am missing something and if you have the opprotunity can explain the process and what I am trying to do.

My question: How do I do a restoration of my system image?

1) I made a system image and backup on my external drive a couple days ago.

2) I needed to do a complete install of W7 on a new HD, so I installed W7 using the factory CD install.

3) So after W7 was reinstalled, I went to my external thinking I could just grap the image off the external and install it over the W7, I wanted the image becase it had all my settings, desktop and updates, etc...that is not found just on the file backup. But not as easy as I thought.

4) Went through a restore of the image process that took me to a reboot of W7 and at one point it asked me to make a back up cd and it ended.

What am I doing wrong? Is it necessary to do a cd backup? I wonder could I just use the factory install disk and do a repair or recovery through that and be able to choose the image that is on my external?

Perhaps I have made this too complicated, so any comments you have is appreciated (I am kind of new at this using Windows....in my Mac I would simply go to an external image and restore it).

Help

Thanks

have you tried restoring the image from the external hardrive without doing a clean install, it work for me when i went from 250gb to 500gb on my laptop.I almost forgot you will need to use the repair dics to use this method.

Thanks for such an immediate reply.

Well I had already done the clean install.

I guess I will just use the install disc and see where that leads me.....I am thinking it will give me a repair option and I can go through that to restore the image that is on my external drive.

Or I can just bite the bullet and load all the back up files, and redo the updates and programs that didn't transfer over.

I will wait for any other comments and then try that.

Thanks again

i do believe the win7 disc has the repair utility in it, i created a repair dics when i made my own recover image on my harddrive via partition. you might want to create a repair disc once your back up and running.

Alright

Got it done. Yay !!!

Used the install disk, used repair, and restored the saved imge that was on my external image. Now my desktop, programs and all files are back as they were before.

Thanks again for your responses. It helped to clarify that the repair route was the way t go.

Hi. Does this work for "BOOTMGR image is corrupt. The system cannot boot". Im having problems with my laptop, dell inspiron mini 1012, a windows 7

If you have a system image then you do not need to reinstall first. The system image restore should completely recreate.

Techkisses, do you actually have a system image backed up to another location (external HD, online storage, a second internal HD)? If so then yes you should be able to completely recover.

When Rob and DonCarlos refer to the "repair utility", do you both mean the "System Recovery Console, which can be either a hidden partition on the HD or else a separately created CD?

cma6, If you go to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Backup and Restore there is a Create a system repair disc option on the left side. Once you create that disc it is actually bootable so you can actually set your BIOS to boot to DVD first and then it will boot and you have the option to repair system files.

Thanks for the informative reply. My intention was to create a hidden partition for the System Recovery Console during Windows 7 installation on a new system.
My concern was about the reliability of restoring the system image if necessary from the Console (or bootable CD).