Solved Win 8 will not restore from backup, error code 34 at boot

I'm having a problem trying to restore Win 8.1 after a crash. All I get is a blue screen with an error code.

I finally deduced that I was having a hardware problem with my beloved SSD (weird glitches and erratic behavior, occasional recognition errors in BIOS, and finally I/O errors when trying to restore from backup), so I pulled it out, and temporarily replaced it with a spare HDD of slightly larger size. The backup/restore program I use is Paragon, and it has worked flawlessly for me for some time, including when I migrated Win 8.0 to that SSD over a year ago. So I pulled up the last full-disk backup (from 4 weeks ago) and did a Restore to the replacement HDD, but the resulting installation will not boot. I've tried it several times, including using a different archive, and each time I get a blue screen saying "Your PC needs to be repaired", with an error code 0xc0000034.

What is this error code, and how do I go about fixing the problem? Is there some kind of issue with restoring an SSD backup to an HDD? (I know there is something about the partition alignment which may be different, for instance.) This program worked just fine in the opposite direction, meaning restoring a backup of an HDD to the SSD.

I might have been able to use the recovery media to fix the problem, if I had the current media... unfortunately, the disk I created was from prior to the 8.1 upgrade, and it won't work anymore. My mistake. But short of a clean install back to 8.0, and then another upgrade to 8.1, does anyone have any suggestions?? I'm dying, here.

I just finished an all day close encounter with my system because of the PC needs to restart message with the big smiley face. I was not able to get the error message because it was so fast.

But what I discovered was after the computer reboots the second time, it will go into a Repairing your computer and then Diagnosing your computer. After that, a Repair menu is presented and one of the options was the Advanced options, followed by Troubleshoot, followed by another Advanced Options. In this option, I found a Startup Settings option which would allow for a Safe Mode boot. So I hit restart and selected Safe Mode from the list. From there, I started msconfig.exe and selected Diagnostic Startup, and restarted.

The system booted into normal Windows, so I started msconfig.exe again and selected normal boot, and the system was working again.

I do not know exactly what caused the original problem, probably something I did while testing something... But now the system is operating normally again. I never found anything that was responsible for the problem, although the Event Viewer did have over 70 DCOM ShellHWDetection Event 1005 error messages.

Different problem, I can't even get that far. What's perplexing to me is, I've restored things using this backup program so many times in the past, but now it's simply not giving me a bootable drive like it should... just a paperweight with a blue screen.

And if I have to resort to a clean reinstall -- it's going to be messy. My original Win 8 was the upgrade version, which I used over Win 7 64-bit.. and then we had the 8.1 upgrade, on top of that. So I may need to do 3 consecutive installs, to get back to where I was.

The reason I answered is because I was also using a backup image when the problem occurred, but mine was made with the Windows Utility.

But not really sure what you mean by "That Far" since mine would also boot to a basic blue screen and then reboot on its own. I only discovered the Safe Mode option hours after it started happening.

I don't know what happened to this one image, and like you have been using them for a while. But for some reason I can replicate the problem when I re-image using it and the repair is the same. An older image worked fine the first time.

Since you are using a different utility to make the images, your situation might very well be different. If you can't get into Safe Mode with any key combinations and your system is not going into the repair options by itself?

Just in case I did not describe the situation correctly, my system booted to a Blue Screen and rebooted by itself. I just let it go and it rebooted to a blue screen again but the next reboot it went into the repair scenario. This system is a pure 8.1 install, if it makes any difference.

Good Luck with yours.

Edit: Although it may not be involved, I noticed the time in my Bios was off by a couple of hours. I thought I set it correctly when I set up the system, but maybe not. You might check yours.

So I may need to do 3 consecutive installs, to get back to where I was.

Click to expand...

You could cut that down to 1 clean install (Win 8.0) and 1 upgrade (to 8.1) by following this procedure
(if necessary):

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/13375-clean-install-windows-8-upgrade.html

One more thing. When you attempted to do a restoral to your old HD, did you set the appropriate options to "delete all existing partitions" (on the target drive if available) as part of the process? Please be advised that I know nothing about Paragon because I use Macrium; however, I did manage to find one instance where having a previous Linux installation, on a restoral attempt to an "unwiped" target drive (that previously contained a Linux boot loader configuration), did result in a no boot condition after a Paragon restoral attempt.

my2cents said:

One more thing. When you attempted to do a restoral to your old HD, did you set the appropriate options to "delete all existing partitions" (on the target drive if available) as part of the process? Please be advised that I know nothing about Paragon because I use Macrium; however, I did manage to find one instance where having a previous Linux installation, on a restoral attempt to an "unwiped" target drive (that previously contained a Linux boot loader configuration), did result in a no boot condition after a Paragon restoral attempt.

Click to expand...

I tried it both ways. Paragon typically restores a disk "at-once", reproducing the exact partition structure of the imaged drive, but when the first time failed, I formatted the target drive and tried again... with the same result. (Although that drive was a single-partition NTFS to begin with.)

The blue screen I get is not your usual one, I.e., it is not followed by a reboot and automatic repair. It is just a static screen that says "Your PC needs to be repaired" and to insert my recovery media. But the recovery disk I have is from 8.0, not 8.1. And while I can boot with it, it won't fix the problem. Attempting to do so gives me a message that my drive is "locked", which makes no sense. I have gotten to a command prompt and tried /fix boot, /fixmbr, etc., but none of the commands seems to make any difference.

Thanks for your tip (above), I may be looking into that, here...

DJRoff said:

The blue screen I get is not your usual one, I.e., it is not followed by a reboot and automatic repair. It is just a static screen that says "Your PC needs to be repaired" and to insert my recovery media.

Click to expand...

OK, but I checked my system and it was set to Automatically reboot after a Blue Screen, where most folks have theirs set to not automatically reboot... Possibly this setting is involved, but I don't know how to change it without the OS being available.

my drive is "locked"

Click to expand...

I only have two remaining suggestions and they are not based on technical merit relative to the above:

1. Try using the diskpart "clean" command to take your HD back to unallocated and see if the restoral works.
2. Look to your BIOS for anything that might have changed relative to your SATA/AHCI settings.

Again, these are just grabbing at straws suggestions.


Good luck to you,

my2cents

my2cents said:

my drive is "locked"

Click to expand...

I only have two remaining suggestions and they are not based on technical merit relative to the above:

1. Try using the diskpart "clean" command to take your HD back to unallocated and see if the restoral works.
2. Look to your BIOS for anything that might have changed relative to your SATA/AHCI settings.

Click to expand...

Already looked at the BIOS, nothing had changed. One thing I did not try was restoring to an unallocated drive, I will give that a shot before I throw in the towel. I'm starting to think that while Paragon worked just fine for 8.0, the version I have just isn't compatible with 8.1. Going to look for an upgraded version.

"OK, but I checked my system and it was set to Automatically reboot after a Blue Screen, where most folks have theirs set to not automatically reboot... Possibly this setting is involved, but I don't know how to change it without the OS being available."

I believe that setting is done in the BIOS, but again, this is not the normal blue screen. That one says something like "Your PC ran into some problems and needs to shut down", whereupon it restarts your computer (if you have it set up to). I'd never seen this screen before, simply telling me my "PC needs to be repaired", with no option to restart other than the Reset button.

It turns out the problem was indeed the backup program itself. Paragon worked very smoothly for Windows 8.0, but apparently, the 8.1 upgrade made it non-functional, and it was giving me no indication of this fact. So I've been doing backups since the fall which looked just fine but were absolutely useless. When I downloaded the newest version of the software, it would not even recognize those old files as backup archivies. So I wound up having to do a complete clean reinstall. A hard lesson to learn!

P.S. I found a link in a related thread which gave me a way to download a direct 8.1 installation ISO... so it was just one single step, after all.