System Restore problems

Question

Hope someone can provide advice as having no luck despite much investigations and searching through these forums and web...   I have an external USB hard drive i am backing up to running Vista's backup tool.   Recently I have noticed a number of problems related (indirectly?) to the external hard drive.   1) When i have the hard drive disconnected, the system restore functions will not work. I cannot manually create restore points. Trying to causes the popup message 'Vista system restore catastrophic failure 0x8000FFFF'   When i reconnect the external hard drive in, the manual restore create works. I haven't tested if the same problem if i tried to system restore from a restore point.   2) I also frequently cannot 'stop' (through Safely remove Hradware) the usb connection to remove the hard drive as the popup message 'Windows can't stop your 'generic volume' device because it is in use. Close any programs or windows that might be using the device, and then try again later'   The only way then that i disconnect (other than to just ignore message and just physically disconnect) is to shut down and then remove connection.   When the external drive is plugged in, I have been able to create system restore points and also restore from them.   So the question is can someone explain to above two points and whether they are related?   I am only using the external drive for weekly backups so why is System Restore dependent on it being connected to function? Surely, it is not saving any system restore points there?   At the moment, they are not causing any system problems and i am putting up with the annoyance of working around them.   Any ideas would be much appreciated.

GioAguilar · Answer

System Restore is also doing a backup or restoration points on your external HDD. Type System Restore, press enter press continue if UAC pops up. On the System Restore window, click on Open System Protection (make sure the external HDD is plugged in) on the next window, uncheck the external HDD, click apply, OK. Then you can restart, and you should have no problem.

bogstick · Answer

Thanks for quick reply.   I had a quick look and i do NOT have the external HDD box checked.   I can also now verify that System restore did not work with the external HDD unplugged.   So it seems for some reason, System Restore depends on the external HDD to be plugged in for it to function!   Of course, this is not an issue if i leave the HDD permanently connected but I would still like to get to the bottom of this?

skroe · Answer

@bogstick wrote:

Thanks for quick reply.

I had a quick look and i do NOT have the external HDD box checked.

I can also now verify that System restore did not work with the external HDD unplugged.

So it seems for some reason, System Restore depends on the external HDD to be plugged in for it to function!

Of course, this is not an issue if i leave the HDD permanently connected but I would still like to get to the bottom of this?

I This is my first Post here, But I have the same problem has you, apart from I'm just trying to Back up to DVD. I have no Idea how to fix this? I'm sure this happened to me when I removed Windows one care. Totally confused. I hope anyone can help please.

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