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    I would like to restore a laptop that has no CD or DVD drive. Is there some other way to initiate the restore program besides booting the restore cd?

     

    Could I somehow transfer the restore program to a bootable USB stick, and boot from that?

     

    Thanks, Michael

    Monday, December 10, 2007 9:28 PM

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    Michael,

     

    Never tried this, but if you can set the BIOS to boot from the USB drive, you ought to be able to copy the files and directory structure from the CD to a 1 GB or larger USB drive, then boot from it.  Won't cost you much to try.

     

    Regards,

    Merrill

    Monday, December 10, 2007 10:08 PM
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    I actually tried that, but could not get it to work.

     

    I found a tool to format the usb drive and make it a bootable dos disk. However, that just boots into dos, and I am not sure what to run after that. I think the usb disk needs to be prepared in some special way, just not sure how to do it.

     

    Thanks, Michael

     

    Monday, December 10, 2007 10:16 PM
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    You should NOT boot DOS but WinPE.

     

    Have a look overhere: http://blogs.msdn.com/jaybaz_ms/archive/2007/10/24/how-to-make-a-bootable-usb-flash-drive.aspx

    Monday, December 10, 2007 11:59 PM
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    You could connect a bootable USB CD drive, too...
    Tuesday, December 11, 2007 4:48 AM
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    Now, where is the fun in that?

    USB Sticks FTW! Wink
    Tuesday, December 11, 2007 4:13 PM
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     GaMeR™ wrote:
    Now, where is the fun in that?
    I'm all about solving the problem as easily and quickly as may be. Which is why I will sometimes advise someone to perform a server reinstallation rather than try to get a broken WHS working the hard way; it's likely to take less time to reinstall and reconfigure than fixing the issue would take. A bootable USB CD-ROM or DVD-ROM is a very useful tool, not very expensive, and much easier than figuring out how to make a flash drive bootable.
    Tuesday, December 11, 2007 8:56 PM
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    Why even bother with a USB drive? If you can get a DHCP server and a TFTP server installed you could boot to the recovery image over PXE.

    Tuesday, December 11, 2007 9:14 PM
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    Bezalel, pretty much anybody can deal with a USB drive of some sort. Booting an image over PXE is likely to be beyond the capabilities of most Windows Home Server users.
    Wednesday, December 12, 2007 9:29 PM
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    brubber wrote:

    You should NOT boot DOS but WinPE.

    Have a look overhere: http://blogs.msdn.com/jaybaz_ms/archive/2007/10/24/how-to-make-a-bootable-usb-flash-drive.aspx

     

     

    Thanks brubber, that worked!

     

    I formated the usb stick using diskpart, and then extracted the restore dvd .iso onto the stick using 7-zip. I could then boot into WinPE just fine from the usb stick.

     

    Thanks, Michael

    Sunday, December 16, 2007 6:36 PM
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     brubber wrote:

    You should NOT boot DOS but WinPE.

     

    Have a look overhere: http://blogs.msdn.com/jaybaz_ms/archive/2007/10/24/how-to-make-a-bootable-usb-flash-drive.aspx

     

    I brought this thread up because I am having issue with this memthod. I followed the steps in preparing the USB drive for the receovery CD and I couldn't boot from the USB drive. The boot started and I saw a horizontal progress bar for Windows bootup, however after 10 seconds following message is displayed.

     

    "An issue was detected and Windows was shutdown in order to prevent damage to your PC" (This may not exact what is displayed, but similiar)

     

    The rest message displays the stack address which looks like Windows crashed.

     

    Now, I know that the PC can boot from USB drive because I tried the WHS installation and it works from another USB drive.

     

    I did many test and here are some results.

     

    1) I couldn't boot the recovery CD from Xbox 360 HDDVD rom which is recognized as DVDROM by the BIOS. Same message.

    2) I tried three different types of USB drive I have and the result is the same.

    3) I also tried a USB connected HDD and the result is the same.

     

    It looks to me that during the file copy, some file may be corrupted. Now I am using Deamon tools to mount the recoberycd.iso from Home Server and use Explorer to copy the whole content of mounted CD to USB drive. I use Vista to do all of these.

     

    Can anyone let me know what I am doing wrong? I have two PCs I need to do recovery because of I messed up the content. Both of these PC don't have CD/DVD ROM drive.

    Thursday, August 28, 2008 3:45 AM
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    I'm not going to reject file corruption completely, but it's unlikely given you've tried multiple copies, all on different media. I don't believe you're doing anything wrong; I believe it's something about the way WinPE is used in the Recovery CD that's effectively incompatible with certain hardware.

    Booting the recovery CD from a USB CD-ROM (or something that the BIOS thinks is a USB CD-ROM) seems to be a problem with some hardware (you'll find other similar threads if you search). You have a couple of options, as I see it. You could open the case on the PC you want to restore and connect a standard IDE or SATA CD-ROM for the moment, then remove it when you're done. Or you can remove the drive from the PC you want to restore and connect it (via USB if you want) to another PC on your network that's been joined to Windows Home Server. Then on that other PC, run C:\Program Files\Windows Home Server\ClientRestoreWizard.exe to restore the drive. Make sure you restore to the correct drive, and that you restore from the correct backup.
    Thursday, August 28, 2008 11:55 AM
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    You can, if you have another PC and can remove the boot disk drive from this PC and add it as a secondary drive in the second PC.  Then run ClientRestoreWizard.exe from that PC.  Be careful to choose the correct hard drive to restore to.  Search the forums for that program name for better directions.  I am trying this method tonight.
    • Proposed as answer by DScruton Monday, December 15, 2008 9:44 PM
    Monday, December 15, 2008 9:43 PM