Win 7 backup failure (and other issues) after new system drive installed

dlisak

Member
A couple of months ago I installed a new SSD drive to replace my old SSD drive as the Windows system/C: drive. After a round of using a combination of Macrium Reflect Free (for cloning the system drive) and EasyBCD (to set up the boot partition on the new drive) things seemed to be working fine.

However, after my first attempt a few days later to use Windows backup I found that I could not and got the familiar 0x80070002 error with the "The system cannot find the file specified" message without the filename.

Upon more research I found that the filename is not specified because backup is presumably looking for boot configuration data in the "System Reserved" partition.

After investigating various ineffective solutions, I found other suggestions that led me to find initially that the "System Reserved" partition was not online. This particular post seemed to list symptoms similar to my issue: Windows Backup fails with 0x80070002: "The system cannot find the file specified" - Super User. I found that

  • bcdedit fails with the error "The system cannot find the file specified" when run from an admin command prompt
  • the msconfig Boot tab is empty and non-functional
  • The list of operating systems in the System Control Panel Advanced tab is empty
  • Windows Backup fails with 0x80070002

I ended up using 'diskpart' to set that partition online but that did not work. Further suggestions online pointed to the fact that the "System Reserved" partition should also be hidden so I changed the partition type ID to '0x17' from '0x07' to make it hidden. Again, that did not work either and I reverted the partition back to '0x07'.

The last thing I tried was a suggestion in the following SevenForums post: Changing Win7 System/Boot Partition without Reinstall. I started with 'bcdboot c:\windows /s c:' but this gave me an error as follows:

"BFSVC: Failed to open handle to resume object. Status = [c0000034]"

(At least I think it was "to resume object" -- in any case the error code was the same.)

It's worth mentioning that when installing the new drive, I had a DVD drive that I disconnected from its SATA port to allow me to connect the new system drive (and left the DVD drive disconnected because I don't really use it anymore) -- I did not initially put the new drive in the same port as the original system SSD drive. I did eventually swap those two drives so that the new SSD drive did occupy the old system drive's SATA port. But this didn't make any difference either.

Finally, another thing I found after going through all of this is that I have *two* BCD files. One is is B:\Boot\BCD which is the "System Reserved" volume. The other one is in C:\BOOT\BCD which is flagged as the "System" partition.

So I am now stuck not willing to go further for fear of screwing up my PC. Everything else is working fine. Just the items listed above (backup, bcdedit, msconfig, etc.) are not working. I'm not sure but this might also impact restore points as well, I haven't checked.

If anyone has any ideas what the problem might be it would be much appreciated. Thanks!
 
You could try editing your BIOS boot sequence to start from the old volume containing the Sys Reserved partition.
EasyBCD will allow you to view (and change it) as well as the "live" version on C. (File > Select BCD store), so you can make sure it is correctly pointing to your new location first.
 
Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately it didn't appear to fix it.

Here is how EasyBCD is showing the settings - maybe that will help move things forward.

Capture1.PNG

Capture2.PNG

Thanks,
Darko
 
Can you include a Disk Management screenshot of your PC when you boot it from the Sys Res partition.
 
Can you include a Disk Management screenshot of your PC when you boot it from the Sys Res partition.

Hi Terry, thanks for the reply.

Here is the screenshot:

diskmgmt.PNG

Note that I do not have any option to boot into anything other than what comes up (i.e., there is no dual boot option when I turn the PC on).

Thanks,
Darko
 
Try seting C "active" in Disk Management

Thanks again, Terry.

I went into diskmgmt.msc and couldn't do it there since "Mark Partition as Active" was greyed. So went into 'diskpart' and set the appropriate partition to active:

diskmgmt2.PNG

But, unfortunately, it didn't fix the issue after a reboot.

Thanks,
Darko
 
There's something strange going on when B is active but the BIOS somehow finds the boot files in C
Are you booting via grub on the Linux HDD and using that to chain to Windows bootmgr on C ?

Disk Management flags have the following meanings

"boot" = "this is the system you're running"
"system" = "this is where I found the boot files for the currently running system"
"active" (on the first HDD in the BIOS boot sequence) = "this is where I started the search for the boot files"
"active" (on subsequent HDDs in the BIOS boot sequence) ="this is where I will look if I don't find something in the MBR on the first HDD"

My last suggestion, after which I'm stumped for any more ideas if you're not booting with grub, is to use EasyBCD
Changing the Boot Partition
to copy the boot files from C to B and resume booting via the Sys Res partition.
 
There's something strange going on when B is active but the BIOS somehow finds the boot files in C
Are you booting via grub on the Linux HDD and using that to chain to Windows bootmgr on C ?

No, the Linux HDD only holds a Linux VM -- it isn't something that can be booted into. I only run it through VMWare.

Disk Management flags have the following meanings

"boot" = "this is the system you're running"
"system" = "this is where I found the boot files for the currently running system"
"active" (on the first HDD in the BIOS boot sequence) = "this is where I started the search for the boot files"
"active" (on subsequent HDDs in the BIOS boot sequence) ="this is where I will look if I don't find something in the MBR on the first HDD"

My last suggestion, after which I'm stumped for any more ideas if you're not booting with grub, is to use EasyBCD
Changing the Boot Partition
to copy the boot files from C to B and resume booting via the Sys Res partition.

I'll give that a shot and get back to you.
 
So I tried it and the same thing.

However, I did notice there is a small change in the "View Settings" screen in Debug Mode:

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device boot
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e}
default {260d2c90-a2fc-11e5-942d-82ec9bba4be4}
resumeobject {260d2c8f-a2fc-11e5-942d-82ec9bba4be4}
displayorder {260d2c90-a2fc-11e5-942d-82ec9bba4be4}
toolsdisplayorder {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout 30
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {260d2c90-a2fc-11e5-942d-82ec9bba4be4}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 7
locale en-US
inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
recoverysequence {260d2c91-a2fc-11e5-942d-82ec9bba4be4}
recoveryenabled Yes
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {260d2c8f-a2fc-11e5-942d-82ec9bba4be4}
nx OptIn

Previously the Windows Boot Manager device was partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1 -- now it is just boot.

Now in the original post I mentioned that I had two BCD files -- one in B:\Boot\BCD and the other in C:\BOOT\BCD. Could this be part of the problem and should I remove one of them?
 
It's not a problem having multiple sets of boot files (the link I gave you makes a duplicate copy of the "live" set into whatever location you specify, leaving the original completely untouched for roll-back purposes)
It sometimes causes confusion if it's not appreciated which set is in use, especially since EasyBCD can operate on any or all of them, which means that sometimes a user makes a change which has no apparent effect (because he/she changed a BCD which isn't actually booting the OS)

System and Active flags should now be on your B partition and "boot" on C.
Are they ?
 
Thanks for sticking with the issue this far, Terry...

It looks like C:\ has the System flag and the Active flag has remained on B:\:

diskmgmt3.PNG

Did I manage to miss a step somewhere?
 
Last edited:
Did you use EasyBCD to change the boot partition to B ?

To be honest I forget which EasyBCD tool I used to "set up the boot partition on the new drive" in my original post. I thought it might have been this screen, but I'm not completely sure:

easybcd01.PNG

However, I notice there is also this screen in "Advanced Settings":

easybcd02.PNG

Maybe I should set this to B:\?
 
To be honest I forget which EasyBCD tool I used to "set up the boot partition on the new drive" in my original post. I thought it might have been this screen, but I'm not completely sure:

View attachment 3948

However, I notice there is also this screen in "Advanced Settings":

View attachment 3949

Maybe I should set this to B:\?


Actually I did also follow your suggestion from last week to change the boot partition (see a few posts above): Changing the Boot Partition
 
Bumping the thread...

I feel like we are one post away from solving this issue. I have a feeling I can do it somehow with the EasyBCD tool too; not exactly sure which option though.
 
Sorry, I don't know why you're booting via the active partition but it's not finding the BCD which is in there.
I've never seen that happen and can't understand why it is unless it has something to do with that BCD text file which as far as I know shouldn't be there (there should be a BCD.LOG text file)
Try renaming that file to BCD.LOG and rebooting.
 
Bad news about the BCD file -- it already is named BCD.LOG:

BootDir.PNG

However, I notice that you remarked "I don't know why you're booting via the active partition but it's not finding the BCD which is in there". Based on the partitions and their flags, which one is the boot partition (and which one should be the boot partition) considering that C: has the "Boot" flag?

BootDrive.PNG

Thanks very much for the help, Terry. You've been very patient.
 
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