A best practice for successful restoration is always to decrypt the disk first.
If you cannot decrypt the disk before attempting restoration, follow the workarounds below at your own risk:
- Follow the instructions provided by your third-party software vendor to restore your backup.
Warning: Do not proceed with the next step unless the third-party software reports that the restoration is successful.
If the third-party software cannot restore your backup while the disk is encrypted, you must decrypt the disk before trying the restoration again.
- If you are unable to boot into Microsoft Windows to decrypt the disk, use the recovery CD that you prepared prior to encryption, to decrypt the disk.
- Follow the third-party software instructions to restart the computer.
Note: You may need to reset the master boot record (MBR), if the system fails to boot and you see a BIOS-level error similar to one of the following:
“Operating System Not Found”
“Missing Operating System”
“Non-system Disk or Disk Error”
“BOOTMGR is missing”
To reset the MBR:
- Insert a DVD appropriate to your Windows operating system.
- Restart your computer.
- Press any key when asked if you want to boot from your DVD drive.
- Choose your language and then click Next.
- Click Repair your computer.
- Select the operating system you want to repair.
- On the system recovery screen, click Command Prompt.
- Type bootrec.exe /fixmbr, then press Enter.
- Type bootrec.exe /fixboot, then press Enter.
- Remove the Windows DVD.
- Reboot the computer.
Note that an overall best practice for creating useful backups is to choose volume-based backups, not file-based.