windows 8 Windows 8 image restore cannot find my very existing system image backup?

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Hi,

 

What are prerequisites for Windows 8 system images to be "found" by the system image restore facility? Any way to force Windows 8 to find a specific backup that is for some reason invisible to the restore facility?

 

I made a system image of my Windows 8 Pro installation (using Control Panel -> Windows 7 File Recovery -> System image), then installed another OS on my main drive for a while, and now I'm trying to revert to the Windows 8 image I have. The problem is that the system image restore function does not find any images on my machine. I don't think this is an issue with missing drivers, because the hard drive and the system image files themselves can be seen by launching the command prompt right from the the Windows 8 recovery mode (which can be reached either by using the installation media, or by going to Settings -> PC Settings -> General -> Advanced startup).

For some reason, the system image restore fails to recognize the backups. At the same time, it is able to see some older (Windows 7 related) images that I have on a separate drive. I'm pretty much clueless as to the reason, but for what it's worth, here are some random thoughts that have crossed my mind:

• Can the new VHDX backup format be somehow messing up discovery? It would seem kind of far fetched to even suspect Microsoft of releasing a product which does not recognize its own new backup format?
  
• Does recovery of a system image require that the same Windows 8 installation that made the image is still installed (i.e. is the use somehow limited strictly to recovery from disasters, as opposed to recovery after installing a totally different OS in between installations?
  

Any ideas are very welcome!

 

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