Restore did not finish successfully. The parameter is incorrect.

[Lima Jaric]

So yesterday I upgraded my Vista beta RC 2 version to the Purchased Vista Home Premium. I was having many backups made in the RC2 which I want to restore in this new installed version. When I try to do so, it fails everytime with an error message saying :

“Restore did not complete successfully. The parameter is incorrect. (0x80070057).”

I don’t whats the problem. Though the files are available in the backup location why is it not able to restore the same ? Any idea how can I fix the same ?

[MikeY007]

Well its very difficult to say what could be the problem as I don’t know about the backup you made. Can you send me the files from %windir%\logs\windowsbackup\ so that I can analyze and let you know the exact cause of the problem ?

[NotaNerd]

Had a similar problem restoring a backup on my Vista machine. An error or number of errors in the backup disk stopped it executing and I was left with only 2009 data(!). Followed other commentators tips (thanks guys!) and used the advanced restore function in Backup and Restore, clicked Files from a backup made on another computer (why, M-soft, why?), located the external backup, clicked through to the select files and folders window and selected 'search' on the right hand side.

This then gave me a search box which at first had me flumoxed - can I remember what all of my files were called? The solution came from a little lateral thinking from a friend who suggested I use all of the obvious file extensions. I started to do that, but even this approach didn't restore everything - in fact, 50Gb of files and foldrs were still missing. Having got hold of a much longer list of software file extensions, I realized that they can be grouped alphabetically and there are file extensions beginning with each letter of the alphabet (and also some numbers).

So I entered '.a', '.b', '.c', and slowly went through the whole alphabet and this has very nearly restored everything. It also turned up some bad files, probably the ones that prevented the backup from executing properly. Windows popped up to ask if I wanted to skip the bad files and skip all similar instances and a window also asked if I wanted to copy and replace files and folders and do this for all conflicts, which both helped to speed up the whole process. A lot of patience and many hours later and the backup is now complete. I hope this helps others to break the riddle with a puzzle that is Microsoft's badly communicated and explained operating system.

I've held back from saying what I really think about Vista OS - Linux/Mac OS here I come, just as soon as I can afford to upgrade this laptop.