Sunday, February 16, 2014

"Windows Repair Disk has Stopped Working" (Solved)

A Repair disk is different from a Recovery or backup disk as a Repair disk utilizes the operating system in a partition usually hidden on the hard drive plus the drivers unique to the computer, while the Recovery (or backup) disc usually includes all the files needed for a complete re-installation of the operating system.

This issue has been floating around for years, I discovered it with my new computer running Windows 7 Pro (I decided to downgrade rather than deal with W8 for now) and all Microsoft will tell you is to boot up with the re-installation/ recovery disc and run the Windows Repair Disk creator utility from there; or try to run from the command line. Dell just keeps churning out PC's without addressing the problem. Well there is a simple fix, at least for Dell computers. You see Dell and other large manufacturer have has their own Repair Disk creator program, which work very well, but the Dell utility conflicts with the Microsoft utility, causing the above error message (this might be somewhat by design as it forces one to use the Dell utility). Here is the fix from dell.com/support-forums.

If you get the error "Windows Repair Disk has stopped working" when trying to make a repair disk in backup and recovery here's how to fix it.

The issue is with the DBROverlayIcon.dll which is a component of Dell Backup and Recovery (Dell Backup And Recovery Shell Extension).To workaround the issue go to the following folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Dell Backup and Recovery\Components\Shell. In that folder right-click the DBROverlayIcon.dll and rename it to DBROverlayIcon.old. Now the Windows Repair Disk creator utility should work.If successful creating a repair disk with Windows Repair Disk creator utility you can rename the DBROverlayIcon.old back to DBROverlayIcon.dll (you will get a warning when changing the file back and a directive that you need Administrative rights to do so; if you are the primary User, you should be able to ignore the directive (since you should be the Administrator) and effect the change, but the Windows Repair Disk creator utility will stop working again.

Another way is to uninstall the Dell  Backup Utility.


This worked for me hopefully it will work for you.

6 comments:

  1. Cant we just use the Dell backup program?

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  2. "Cant we just use the Dell backup program?" Certainly. The Dell backup program works very well and I used it on a recent recovery with success. Keep in mind though the Repair Disk I am talking about is not a backup. The Repair Disk is designed to boot to a rescue screen if your computer will not. The Dell rescue disk only works with the Dell Backup (which can access OS partition or a Dell backup disk you can create) and the same with the MS Backup utility only working with the MS Repair Disk utility. You can use a utility in either Dell Backup or MS backup to make a rescue disk, but if you want to use the Windows utility you need to deactivate the Dell utility.

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  3. My recovery image doesn't work, so I can't use the Dell recovery image. The day I got my laptop, I opened the program to create a Recovery disk and immediately got the message "the factory recovery partition that was included with your system is either missing or corrupt". I had to rename the .dll to use Windows to create a repair disk. I called Dell since it was a brand new laptop that had nothing done to it before the message and their response was to send me a windows 7 disk.....

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    Replies
    1. I really can't speak for Dell, but hopefully my post helped getting the windows 7 repair disc. You should also use the "Create a System Image" utility and/or the "Backup" utility. The rescue disc is just to boot your computer and get it to the point that you can use Backup or System Image"

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  4. I was able to fix this by upgrading to a newer version the Dell Backup Utility. I still have the free version (but updated). Right now the Windows system repair disk is being created

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  5. This worked perfectly for me. Thank you for taking the time to share this information.

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