I have installed OS 11.0 KDE 4 kernel alongside MS Vista business professional. I now find that the installed vista backup system no longer works. I have tried vista system restore to no avail. I have tried MS knowlegde base with the error code but the problem & fixes offered do not appear relevant to my situation. I am fairly confident that this problem must have had something to do with the Suse install repartitioning of the hard drive. The error message I get is that backup cannot find a hard drive or DVD drive to backup to. These items appear OK in windows explorer however and can be read and written to by everything except vista backup. The error explanation is “Filename,directory or volume label syntax is incorrect 0x8007007b” Would appear there is a bug in 11.0 which is significant I would appreciate some thoughts on where to go from here?
Are you able to boot into Vista itself? openSUSE? If you can get into openSUSE, open a terminal window and do this:
su
fdisk -l -u
The first command switches you to root. Post back here the output of the second command which will list the partition table.
I assume this machine came with Vista installed? The Vista backup system you are referring to, is this to back up data on the Vista partition, or is the OS system recovery utility?
Hi Mingus 725
No problem booting opensuse,the output to your command string is
Denis@linux-iz1d:~> su
Password:
linux-iz1d:/home/Denis # fdisk -l -u
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
129 heads, 4 sectors/track, 605778 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xbbc58b91
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 14338047 7168000 1c Hidden W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 14338048 130449915 58055934 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 170627072 312578047 70975488 f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda4 * 130449916 170627071 20088578 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 170629120 219289467 24330174 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 219289469 223483728 2097130 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 223483732 312577835 44547052 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order
linux-iz1d:/home/Denis #
The last sentence may tell us something?
Regards the vista side of things the system restore I tried is the inbuilt one that just took me back to a date prior to the opensuse installation. My vista system came as OEM and the only system restore on that is to take me back to the state the computer was in when I bought it, all current data lost - so without a currently functioning backup this could be a problem.
The recovery options on the full vista system do not come with the OEM and I have been so far unable to find these programs off the web. So very much hope you can crack this for me. Many thanks Denis
Just to confirm: You have a machine that came with Vista installed. It has a “system recovery” mechanism that enables restoring the disk to its original factory delivered state, using a “recovery partition.” Right? That partition is the first “primary” on the disk, ~7GB formatted FAT32, and probably holds two compressed image files; it is marked “hidden” to prevent it confusing the Vista boot loader. In the recovery process, these files are decompressed and copied to the Vista OS partition, which is the second primary, ~60GB.
Fdisk reporting that “the partition table entries are not in disk order” is not a problem. Partitions are numbered sequentially as they are created. But its possible - or sometimes necessary - for partitions to be moved or added in such a way that the physical order on the disk is not the same as the chronological sequence. That is the case with your disk.
If you carefully look at the starting and ending sectors, you can see that sda4 is the third primary partition. sda3 is the fourth primary; it is an “extended” primary. An extended primary, of which there can only be one, was invented to work around the PC limitation of four primaries; it acts as a container that can hold additional partitions which are called “logicals”. So sda5-7 are logicals which reside inside of sda3. Typically, desktop linux is installed using three partitions (the root, home, and swap). When two or more primaries already exist, that necessitates using an extended primary and logical partitions. I can’t be 100% positive w/o looking at the program code, but I’m fairly certain that the openSUSE installation saw that you have an unconventional partition/boot setup, and was smart enough to therefore not install the “grub” boot loader to the disk’s MBR; instead it chose to use the existing Vista MBR boot code. That Windows code (called the IPL) searches for the first “active” primary partition not an extended (that is, one of three possible), and transfers control to its boot sector. Since there were already two primaries, and so an extended was required, a fourth primary was created for the openSUSE root partition; it was placed after the second partition because some bios’s have difficulty booting from the end of the disk. To set up a dual-boot configuration, the grub boot loader was installed to the openSUSE partition boot sector and that partition was marked as active instead of the Vista partition. So, the IPL loads the sda4 boot loader which can boot openSUSE on that partition or can hand-off to the Vista boot loader on the first partition. When you boot now you get the openSUSE grub boot menu with choices to boot openSUSE or Windows, right?
What is unconventional about your setup is the beginning of the disk. Note in the partition table that the first begins with sector 2048; there is ~1MB on the disk in front of that partition. Ordinarily, the first partition begins with sector 63; the first sector is the MBR and the space between is unused. There are two possible reasons for this: First, your system’s manufacturer has pushed the partitions out to create space for the system recovery program code. Or, second, this is an example of Vista using it’s “1MB partition buffer” (it is little known and even less documented that MS has created a new set of variable partitioning rules with Vista, which can sometimes cause serious problems if partitioning is done with another tool, whether that be XP, commercial 3rd-party tools, or linux).
It may be that the reason you are not seeing the system recovery utility now is because the Vista partition is not marked active or - and this would be highly unconventional - there is a boot sector in that first recovery partition that is used instead of the Vista partition. In either case, it is trivial to switch the active flag to either of those partitions.
Also, in regards to Vista recovery media. You are correct that an oem Windows license does not come with installation/repair media, either external or on disk. This was Microsoft’s practice with XP, too, and it has caused a heckuva lot of headaches for users. This time, MS has produced a burnable iso of the Recovery Environment that is on the retail media (although it’s very hard to find it). You can get it here Vista Recovery Disc. Now, there is a critical caveat with this: as described above, your oem has done something unique with the OS installation and recovery setup, and very likely there is no technical documentation. Understand that it is entirely possible to use a standard Vista program from the RE and bork your installation. So before using it for anything, be absolutely sure what you are doing, and have a backup. I would be especially wary on a machine like yours using the RE’s automatic repair facilities; use the built-in command line shell instead if at all possible.
Before proceeding, I need to know, during the openSUSE installation was the first Vista partion, now ~60GB, downsized? And, the second Windows partition, ~25GB, when was it created and what is on it?
Thank you for your very comprehensive reply which I found helpful. Responding to your post beginning at the end and working backwards.
The OEM installation appeared from within Vista to comprise two roughly equal partitions plus the invisible one (or perhaps more). Shortly after purchase I altered the visible partitions to ntfs using commands from within Vista. Apart from that I did not have anything else to do with disk configuration.
I am not really much of an under the bonnet (hood I think you call it in the USA) computer person. If I understand you correctly, your take on this is that there was something a bit unusual with the OEM disk configuration and that the OS installer did its best to work around that, which may or may not be the source of present problems.
Regards vista system restore. There is a utility in vista (and XP) called system restore which automatically stores the system/registry information at periodic intervals, presumably in the invisible fat32 partition, sometimes by default it also does this when you install new programs or one can set it to do an update manually. Then if something goes wrong one can nominate a system restore point to a date prior and reset the system to that - current data remains intact but programs installed subsequent are lost. That is the system restore I tried which changed nothing.
I also have an OEM iso cd which would in theory restore the system to the configuration that existed when I bought the computer, all data and programs subsequently installed would be lost.
The only thing I can I have found wrong with vista after the install is the backup facilities ability to identify an external hard drive or the installed CD/DVD drive.
There are issues related to opensuse that I have not yet explored the main one currently preventing me from making a complete changeover to OS for daily use (using Vista as a secondary option for MS programs that will not run under wine or not have an acceptable open source equivalent) is the wireless link which OS has not even identified as existing this whole area judging from the threads is obviously still something of a learning curve which I plan to explore at my leisure in due course.
Meantime issue is how to recover from the present situation.
The simplest would appear (I think) to be to reinstall the vista backup system program in isolation, having first deleted all registry references to it on the current drive.
Problem is I have absolutely no idea how to go about that. Any suggestions as to where I might be able to research this option further?
A more cumbersome option would appear to delete a lot of partitions using suitable partitioning software and start again after having backed up all critical data first. Which would be fine if I had a backup that worked - there are of course other backup options like ghost which might work but my limited experience of ghost was that it had a will of its own and I visualise finishing back at square one!
I guess I could just copy critical data files from vista and then, after repartitions do a reinstall of vista,followed reinstall of programs followed by data restoration but that is a lot of work.
Although it does not solve my immediate vista problem. I would also like to know whether a clean install of OS on a separate laptop is an option? Can OS find all the hardware and install necessary drivers without help from windows? Would appear from the lack of a wireless link on the present installed system the answer is probaly no? Actually I am assuming that OS
interrogates windows about the hardware and drivers but that may be utterly wrong? In which case I would presumably finish up with an OS install no worse than my current one?
I have gone on long enough. Your thoughts on the restore/reinstall options would be much appreciated, especially with regards where I might be able to get more information on my favoured option which is to just reinstall the vista backup in isolation and see what happens next.
Regards vista system restore. There is a utility in vista (and XP) called system restore which automatically stores the system/registry information at periodic intervals, presumably in the invisible fat32 partition. . . That is the system restore I tried which changed nothing.
I also have an OEM iso cd which would in theory restore the system to the configuration that existed when I bought the computer, all data and programs subsequently installed would be lost.
Things are a bit more clear now; we’ve been talking about two different things. What I was ref’g to previously is the “system recovery”, not the “system restore”. I know exactly how the latter works. These mechanisms, as well as “system backup”, are entirely unrelated to one another (except in the sense that they all are for some form of repair). I don’t know what you wanted to use system restore to accomplish following the openSUSE installation. System restore just takes a snap shot of the registry hives and Windows system control files. It is conceivable that a pointer could be invalid, but unless you have a specific need to go back to a certain restore point now, then that is academic. If I understand you correctly, you are thinking that the system restore application itself is not working. The installation of openSUSE (or any other OS) will have no bearing whatsoever on the system restore executable. Clear out all the restore points (they roll over anyway), reboot, then manually create one, reboot, and test the program’s ability to “return” to that restore point. The best way to clear them out is to “turn off” system restore; that should delete the files. If that doesn’t work, flush the prefetch folder, defragment, and try it again. Also note that by default Windows turns on system restore for all volumes; that is not a requirement and, unless programs are being installed elsewhere than C, there is little or no value in using it on those volumes.
System recovery is altogether different. If you have a recovery CD (not DVD), then most likely your recovery method requires both the CD and the hidden partition. The CD’s function is to boot the system; there is an application on it which will find and decompress the images on the hidden partition, copying the contents to the main Vista partition. And, yes, this application formats that partition first, so everything there gets wiped off.
This leaves the probability that the 2048 sectors in front of the first partition are empty, there because the manufacturer installed Vista using its new partitioning rules. The best explanation I’ve found for all this is at Vista’s New Partitioning Rules. However, as long as the first partition is not changed, AFAIK there should be no issue. If you ever need to verify what is actually in that space, that is possible (although rather technical) to do.
The simplest would appear (I think) to be to reinstall the vista backup system program in isolation, having first deleted all registry references to it on the current drive.
Sorry, but I don’t understand what you are actually trying to do here. And the last half of the sentence - stay away from the registry hives unless you know exactly what you are doing! Are you ref’g to reinstalling the “system restore” application program? AFAIK, that is not possible. Vista retail media does not even include a “repair install” option as did XP, and even there, that option only copies the OS files back from the original installation media. What you have with your oem CD/recovery partition is the functional equivalent of a clean install from Vista retail media, but with all the hardware drivers and configuration included. But try the above; just flushing everything out of system restore may resolve any issues.
The only thing I can I have found wrong with vista after the install is the backup facilities ability to identify an external hard drive or the installed CD/DVD drive.
Here it sounds like you are referring to the Vista backup system (i.e., not system restore and not system recovery). There is absolutely nothing that installing another OS would do, which would affect Vista’s backup program’s ability to find a physical device on the machine.
I would also like to know whether a clean install of OS on a separate laptop is an option? Can OS find all the hardware and install necessary drivers without help from windows? Would appear from the lack of a wireless link on the present installed system the answer is probaly no? Actually I am assuming that OS interrogates windows about the hardware and drivers but that may be utterly wrong?
Ummm, utterly wrong. Installing an OS on a separate machine is, well, separate. What is involved in doing so is strictly a function of that particular software and hardware, nothing else. There is no “help” from another OS, or what another OS has done - they are always totally unaware of the other, let alone interrogating one another. Other than within the family of *nix’s (which share a great deal), this is true of all OS’s on all machines.
Thank you for all your help. With the aid of the vista software recovery software you put me onto I was eventually rewarded with a message “one or more components is missing, reinstall the application”.
I have reinstalled vista and also opensuse and this time there are no conflicts whatsoever, so OS installation was obviously not the cause of the problem.
Look forward to getting to grips now with OS and kissing off microsoft forever once I have a bit more confidence and knowledge. The day I discovered my 3 year old office suite would not work properly with vista and the MS knowledge base offered only one solution “get office 07” I vowed I would never buy another microsoft product. So now it is linux or mac in the future.
Thanks again
Very glad to hear that the issues are resolved.
And, welcome to the community!