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I am attempting to do a system state restore on a Windows Server 2016 box, however the server is in a data center (1&1) and I only have RDP and serial console access to it. I have the WindowsBackupImage folder on my d drive which should not be involved in the system changes as they are all on C. I have hit two major snags.

The first is that I am having trouble getting Microsoft Backup to accept the path to the image. Some reading online seems to indicate it should be possible to run from the D drive, but I can't figure out the proper way to do so.

The second issue is that some accounts seem to indicate that there may be sections of the process that require interaction where I'm unsure if the serial console or RDP will be available and I'm not sure if there is a way to make them run unattended.

AJ Henderson
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  • The supported way to perform a system state restore is to start the computer from a recovery disk. If you want to try to do it online, the catalog would need to be imported. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/wbadmin-restore-catalog – Greg Askew Dec 15 '18 at 18:29
  • @GregAskew - interesting, I've had trouble finding more information about that as everything I've found online had it going through Windows Backup first. I actually can get to a recovery environment if it can be done entirely from there, but I couldn't find anything on how to actually find it from the recovery environment. – AJ Henderson Dec 15 '18 at 18:44
  • @GregAskew - all I see is a system image restore in the recovery disk. I see no system state restore option. – AJ Henderson Dec 16 '18 at 03:10
  • I believe system image includes system state, but if that isn't appropriate and you don't have a separate system state backup in the catalog you may be out of luck. If you do have it, it may be possible to do an online system state restore. It isn't supported by Microsoft, but I have done it numerous times and it never failed. – Greg Askew Dec 16 '18 at 21:09

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It turns out that if you move the WindowsBackupImage folder to the root of the non-system drive (in my case d:\WindowsBackupImage), it will detect just fine in Windows Backup and allow you to do a restore of it. Unfortunately, in my case, something went horribly wrong and after an initial reboot that worked and had services running, my next reboot after bluescreened with a system corruption error and required wiping my system and starting the restore over again from scratch.

AJ Henderson
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