The Computer System protection plan stores all of the system information to restore a computer, and optionally any attached data disk volumes. You can also restore individual files or folders from the plan using the Explore and Restore actions. See Restoring Files and Folders. You must use the System Recovery Environment to restore an entire system.

Assuming you have run a Computer System protection plan for the system you wish to restore and have saved the System Recovery Environment to media, you can restore the computer system as follows:

Booting a Computer for Recovery

The System Recovery Environment (SRE) is used to boot a computer that needs to be recovered. Most modern computer systems can boot from CD/DVD or USB drives. Check your computer specifications and BIOS support for booting from CD/DVD or USB drives. You may have to select the boot drive from a boot menu at startup or adjust the BIOS to have the system choose to boot from CD/DVD or USB drive.

Virtual machine hosts, sometimes referred to as hypervisors, allow a virtual machine (VM) to be configured to boot from a physical CD/DVD drive with bootable media inserted or a virtual CD/DVD drive linked to an ISO image file (.iso extension). To recover a VM using the SRE, configure the VM to boot from CD/DVD media or copy the SRE ISO file to the hypervisor and configure the system to boot from an ISO file as a CD/DVD drive.

Once you boot the SRE you are presented with the SRE Launch screen. This screen is the home screen for the SRE and allows the user to initiate restoring a system with a step-by-step system recovery wizard, use advanced tools to change system configuration through the command prompt, shut down or restart the computer.

Most system restores can be run without requiring the use of the command prompt. There are several reasons for using the command prompt, for example you can set an IP address for a network adapter using the netsh command, if a DHCP server does not provide one.

Restoring your Computer System

From the SRE Launch screen, select Restore your computer to start a step-by-step wizard to specify which system you would like to restore and execute the system restore.

The first step is to help the wizard find stores and archives that contain recovery points produced by running Computer System protection plans. There are two locations the wizard can search to find recovery points: local disks and network locations. Local disks could range from USB drives (e.g. RDX) to direct attached storage (DAS), to iSCSI connected disks. Network locations are shares on an Archive Manager computer that have stores shared for remote access.

Note: To search network locations, the SRE has to be able to bind to a network adapter. At boot time the SRE searches all of the network drivers to find a match for your hardware. If a network driver is available and compatible with your system it is loaded and attempts to obtain an IP address using DHCP. If a network driver cannot be loaded by the SRE you can click Load Driver to browse for a 32-bit network adapter driver compatible with your system. Once the network driver is loaded, the driver attempts to obtain an IP address using DHCP.

If you click Search local disks, the disk drives attached to the system are scanned for possible systems to recover.

If you click Search network locations you are prompted to map a network drive letter to a UNC path. There are two ways to connect to the shares on an Archive Manager server, a specific store share or the administrative share for a drive where one or more stores reside. The simplest way is to use the administrative share, because the wizard searches all stores on the drive for possible systems to recover. For example, if your stores are on the D drive of your Archive Manager server you can specify \\<archive_manager_computer_name>\D$ as the folder.

Otherwise, you can see the share name for a store by right-clicking the store in the Archive Manager console and selecting the Properties action. The Sharing tab has a list of the possible shares you can use for the store.

Once you find which share to map enter the path to the shared folder and click OK and enter the credentials for the user account that can access the store and click OK.

Note: Use the same account for accessing the store through a network folder that you use for your protection plans.

Next, choose the system, system plan and the recovery point to use for recovery. Each system that has recovery points available in the stores that were found is displayed in the list as a group. The system name, OS version and build are displayed. Clicking the + symbol to the right of each group displays the available recovery points for the server. Each recovery point lists the name of the protection plan that created the recovery point and the time the protection plan ran. Select the recovery point you would like to restore to the computer and click Next.

Next, configure the volume-to-drive mapping for the restore. The volumes that were selected by the protection plan are displayed with the original drive letter, label, capacity, and file system type. Check the first drive you would like to restore. The Map To column will automatically choose the first disk drive attached to the system and specify to use the Remaining Space on the drive. If this is not the desired mapping you can change the disk you would like to map the volume to from the drop-down menu in the Map To column. You can change the size of the volume that will be created on the drive by selecting the ... button in the Restore Size column. A good volume-to-drive mapping will have a checkmark icon. If the volume mapping you have specified is smaller than the original capacity, the mapping will have a warning icon.

Note: If no drives are displayed in the window for the volume mapping you may need a driver for a storage controller installed in your computer. If you need to load a driver click Load Driver and browse to a location containing a compatible 32-bit driver. Once the driver is installed, click Rescan to scan for drives to map to volumes.

Once you are satisfied with your mappings click Next.

Next confirm that you are ready to start the restore. There are two options on this page, whether or not to restore the boot information and whether or not to restore with high performance settings. When you are ready to begin the restore, click Next. You will be warned that the data on the existing volumes will be destroyed. Click Yes to continue or No to return and change your settings.

While the restore is running, you can monitor the throughput and an estimate when the restore will finish based on throughput.

After the files are restored for the operating system a command prompt window opens. You will be prompted to restore the boot information for each Windows installation found on the disk drives of the computer. Respond with a "Y" or "A" in the window to complete repairing the boot device on the system. If you do not repair the boot device the restored system may not boot.

When the restore is finished you can view the restore log or click Finish to return to the SRE Launch screen.

Once back at the launch screen, you can choose to restart the computer and boot into the restored OS. Note: You may need to adjust your BIOS boot menu if you changed it during the recovery process.