Comments on: Restoring a PC using the Windows Home Server (WHS) Restore CD

By: Thrivingdead

Thrivingdead — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:42:51 +0000

Wonderful, the notepad workaround finally worked!

The drivers only become active after continuing to the restore dialogs, (before that they report in ipconfig “an internal error occurred, the data is invalid”). And then for some reason it insisted I had the server password wrong

By: Greg

Greg — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 06:01:14 +0000

Thanks a million, only struggled for 3 hours before finding this. Notepad trick worked to install a set of 32 bit vista drivers.

By: Box293

Box293 — Thu, 12 May 2011 03:16:31 +0000

You *can* restore from a home server that is located on another subnet. You can do this by editing the hosts file that will then allow us to resolve your server name to an IP address.

When you get to the part where it asks you for the name of the server, IP addresses aren’t accepted.

Press (and hold) LeftCtrl-LeftAlt-LeftShift for about 5 seconds, and a command prompt will appear.

Type:
notepad x:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Press Enter
Add to the end of the file
For example:
192.168.6.22 SERVER

Save this file.

If you return to the command prompt you should now be able to ping your home server by the name you gave it in the hosts file.

Go back to the part where it asks you for the name of the server, now you can use the name you gave it in the hosts file. Sometimes it takes two goes before it works but you will be able to proceed to restore from the home server.

All of these steps assume that the router between your computer and the home server allows communication between them AND the correct default gateway is defined on the home server and the DHCP scope that hands the IP address to the machine you are restoring to.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 23:37:50 +0000

To OP: Thank you so much! It’s taken me 12 hours of not getting restore to work before I found this backdoor.

To Mike: Try to get the driver installation for your network card (if that is the driver you are having problems with) as a single installation file. This might be named SETUP.EXE but mine from Dell was something like R12345.EXE. Put this on your USB stick, navigate to that directory in Notepad as explained above and run that file as administrator. This will then run the driver install. In other words, the SETUP.EXE you want is probably not on the WHS PC Restore disk.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:46:08 +0000

I tried what you suggested. When I right click on help use
“view source” and file open there are 4 places to look:

Local Disk (C:)
Boot (X:)
The CD ROM Drive (iso disk)
USB drive

The only place I could find a setup.exe file was on C:WINDOWS/SYSTEM32 and when I right click and open I get the error:

pSetupAppendStringToMultiSz could not be located in dynamic link library SetupAPI.dll

Doesn’t work for me. I am looking in the right place?

Thanks

By: Dina

Dina — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 02:06:22 +0000

Just wanted to say thanks again. Hubby downloaded a nasty virus over the Christmas weekend. Good thing his backup ran the day before we left! I totally have this article bookmarked as “Restore Hubby’s PC”

By: Benoit Miller

Benoit Miller — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 04:18:54 +0000

Another, much simpler “back-door” into WHS: Once the restore CD has finished booting, press (and hold) LeftCtrl-LeftAlt-LeftShift for about 5 seconds, and a command prompt will appear. From there you can navigate wherever you need…

(I found this by accident just now!)

Cheers,
Ben.

By: rembtito

rembtito — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 02:12:06 +0000

” You won’t have a wireless network UI to configure wireless security, and it needs to be on the same subnet as the WHS.”
Are you sure that this is so?

By: summersby

summersby — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 04:09:59 +0000

Seriously, great tip! Saved me the few hairs I have left on my head.

“How’s this as a backdoor? Click on help during the restore wizard, right-click “View source” on a help page which opens Notepad. In Notepad go to File->Open, find your driver’s setup.exe, right click “open”. Yes, this was the only way I could get my NIC drivers loaded.”

By: mkztg

mkztg — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:54:14 +0000

Thanks for this tip! Running the setup didn’t work for me but I did figure out that the drivers I pulled off the WHS had the .inf actually setup at ._nf so the recovery console wasn’t using the drivers. Not sure why this was like that but I was able to fix the file extension and at least it will now see the network card. It still didn’t see the server using these drivers, I had to pull the actual drivers from the laptop support site but now everything is GREAT! Thanks for the tips!

~mkztg