Hello.
Three days ago, I began a journey to create a dual boot hackintosh, with Mavericks on a 300GB partition, and Windows 8.1 on a 699GB partition. At first, I thought it would be ridiculously easy to do, all I needed to do was create a boot drive, install Chimera, and be done with it. Unfortunately, there were tons of roadblocks that I had to overcome, and I'm at the very end of the process, I don't know if I can copy and paste a System Image to restore from.
Some background information is probably needed. I eventually had to clear the entire HDD, and partitioned the thing with Disk Utility. However, before I did so, I spent a night backing up everything I had on my computer using a Windows 8.1 feature. It created a backup which you can see below which is a System Image which I am supposed to be able to use a boot drive to restore to. Unfortunately, that didn't work, and a consistent error message popped up.
I contacted Microsoft Support, and they couldn't fix it, even if it did take over three days and four different tech reps. So, I have been recommended to a tier 2 support team, and they had to analyze my situation even further. They said that they would call me back on Saturday, but I don't want to wait that long (impatient bastard, I am). So, after installing Mavericks, I installed 7 from a used disc, upgraded to 8, then did a clean install of 8 using a media drive. After that, I managed to update to Windows 8.1, which is what I was using prior to the system reset. I'm trying to do some troubleshooting here.
(Microsoft's support team is very helpful, and they are very good.)
So the Hard Disk Image File is the one you should take a look at. It is the entire C: drive before I had done a clean install. The explanation would be tedious and wouldn't really benefit anyone. So, I mounted it using a VHD, and used Autoplay to go ahead and open up the virtual hard drive. Now, inside of it, files from my previous state (before the fresh install of Windows 8.1) are on it as shown:
Okay. I am wondering if I can just copy and paste these files into my C: drive for a system restore. It wouldn't bring back everything (preferences, background, themes, etc.), but I was wondering if it would keep everything I had before the reset installed, such as my games, my movies, my applications, etc. It would be a pain in the ass if I had to reinstall everything and beat games over again. If not, could you inbox me so I could get some further help? Many support posts on Microsoft.com and various other websites were of no use to me.
How do I fix "Volume Shadow Copy" when I attempt to perform a system restore with a boot drive (I have that on my USB drive). I can give you more specific details.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!