EFI Partition Restore Issue

[Nurps]

Heya,

I'm a new user of "Image for Windows" so I've been playing around with it within VirtualBox to get a better feel for how things work.

The issue I've been having is with restoring the EFI partition. I'm doing everything within TBWinPE.

I create a full backup using defaults apart from enabling byte-for-byte validation. I then delete all partitions (clear boot sector selected too) with PartWork and restore the full drive using defaults, apart from enabling byte-for-byte validation, and all goes fine (both Automatic/Normal modes have been tested), and the system boots with no issues.

So I try and see how restoring partitions goes. I delete just the EFI partition (clear boot sector selected) and restore it without changing any settings, and on restart I'll get the message "BdsDxe: failed to load Boot0004 "Windows Boot Manager" from HD(1,GPT,-----,0x800,0x32000)/\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi: Not Found" even though the system still boots fine.

So I boot back into TBWinPE and try restoring with different options, both individually and in combinations (Set Active, Update Boot Partition, Restore Disk Signature, and Restore First Track), each time I delete the EFI partition with PartWork just to be consistent.

A couple of times I thought I got the right options selected, as there was no message upon restart, but after trying the settings again to be sure, I get that message again.

What settings do I need to use so I no longer get that message? just like with a full drive restore.

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VirtualBox guest:
Windows 10 Pro 22H2 with EFI/Secure Boot enabled (non default settings)
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TBWinPE/RE Builder version 1.42.
Windows 10 Pro [10.0.19045 22H2,x64(AMD64)] WinRE [10.0.19041.5847(10.0.19041-5847.0),x64]
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Image for Windows 4.04
TBIView 4.63
TBOSDT 3.02 (Professional for BootIt version)
TBLauncher 1.39

[TeraByte Support]

That message is coming from the UEFI Firmware. If it still booting then there is another entry in there that correctly points to the partition. You can use tbosdt to check the various entries in the firmware. "help list uefi" to see what's available so "list uefi bootitems /a" or "list uefi bootitems /a /d"; that said, a lot of firmwares don't handle the UEFI boot items very well. You'd look to see what GUID it is referencing if that's how it's set up (so you wouldn't want to use options to change the signature/id). But clearly they have the normal process of finding efi system partition on a given device and booting the \efi\boot\bootx64.efi (which for MS will then load the other file). Also powering off the VM and back on may clear those extra entries it created.

[Nurps]

The output for "list uefi bootitems /a /d" only lists one "Windows Boot Manager" entry, and if I delete that entry from within the uefi settings the message goes away and the system boots fine.

Anyway I guess I was wrong about full restores, I did one again and this time I get the same message for the first time, still only one "Windows Boot Manager" entry listed though. Shutting down the VM didn't clear the entry.

Seeing as VirtualBoxs EFI feature is listed as special it might be experimental and still buggy.

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Just tried it within VMware Workstation and no message there with either full or partition restores.