Saving a Windows 10 Backup Image to a USB is Possible But a Waste of Time

The point of this post is not to instruct how to restore or backup Windows 10, which it does mention, but to point out how instruction have been giving, which allows you to save a Windows 10 system image on a USB, but it's useless because you can't restore from it.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could save a Windows backup/restore image file to a USB? Well you can https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-update/how-to-create-windows-10-system-image-on-a-usb/24e84aff-3916-4661-894b-f140005d3b9e?page=3, but it's a useless procedure. The reason is, while the procedure will let you save a WindowsImageBackup file to your USB, there is no way to use it  to restore your system because windows 10 will only restore from a hard drive; you can manually access your personal files from the WindowsImageBack file, but you can't rebuild your hard drive image, meaning you will need a new install of Windows 10, manually move your personal files to their respective folders, and reinstall all your programs/apps.

Rather than deal with such a mess, you have better choices, including saving the Windows backup image a real hard drive or use a Windows 10  utility (File History)  that save all your personal files in real time on a USB, so you can restore them at any time. Now you can't rebuild a hard drive with file history, so for a total reinstall you will still have to reinstall Windows 10, but File History will restore your personal files automatically from a USB afterward. There is a third way, which restores you Windows OS to a prior state/date. This was a great utility called "System Restore", which saves a previous configuration by date, when your OS was operating properly, and allows you to undo what ever changes where made to your computer to make it unstable, reverting back to to that earlier configuration. The problem with the is utility is 1) it is turned off by default in Windows 10 and even if you turn it on, I've not been successful using the utility with Windows 10, ending up with the dreaded error.

"System Restore did not complete successfully. Your computer’s system files and settings were not changed.

Details:
System Restore could not access a file. This is probably because an anti-virus program is running on the computer. Temporarily disable your antivirus program and retry System Restore.
An unspecified error occurred during System Restore. (0x80070005)

You can try System Restore again and choose a different restore point. If you continue to see this error, you can try an advanced recovery method. For more information, see What is recovery?"

I tried the restore in both safe mode and from a recovery disc with the same result. While I only used the utility in XP, it worked flawlessly, but I've read since windows 7, it has been problematic.  So I would not put my trust in this utility anymore

Compaq d530 upgrade to Windows 7; fixing "Multimedia Audio Controller" error (Solved) and installing leagacy video drivers

I have a Compaq d530s computer (SFF case) with a Pentium 4 CPU and like many I decided to upgrade my XP computer with Windows 7. The problem with such an endeavor is a lack of Win 7 drivers for legacy hardware; in my case a NVIDIA FX 5200 graphics card and a legacy ADI sound on board audio controller. As mentioned  I determined the audio chip on the motherboard was an ADI Soundmax AC97 (the usual with d530 computers). After installing Win 7 the Device Manager showed an unknown device(yellow question mark) named  "Multimedia Audio Controller", meaning there was no driver for the onboard audio chip.  I searched for a Win7/Vista driver for hours* until I found this driver (the key is to know the audio onboard chip number; in this case AC97)  , "ADI Soundmax AC97 Integrated Driver" at  https://adi-soundmax-ac97-driver.jaleco.com/download also known as the "SP44472" driver. I ran the driver program and bingo, I now have sound.

After hours of searching, I found drivers that worked for both. Although I tried numerous NVIDIA driver installers for win7 and Vista, They all failed, mostly because they could not identify my video card. However I did find one thread from NVIDIA that recommended the following; find XP drivers for your NVIDIA video card and load them. The result will be the program will load the XP drivers (175.19_geforce_winxp_32bit_english_whql), but the program will stop at some point to say you're using the wrong Windows OS or it could not find the hardware, or something similar, however the files will remain on your hard drive, in my case c:\NVIDIA. Next, go the Device Manager, d-click on the "Display adapter" and then d-click on the pnp generic driver that is currently installed. Click on the "Driver" tab, click on Update and chose, "Browse my computer for driver software" and click the "Browse" button at the end of the "Search for drivers in this location" pane. Browse to the location of the XP drivers and click "Next" at the bottom left of the "Update Drivers" window, and in the following window, choose to install the driver; it should load the driver and your video adapter will come alive.

* several websites recommended, first going into the bios and disabling the PCI "Intel Audi Device" (Advanced/PCI Device/Intel Audio Device), which is not present on the motherboard. Re-boot the computer, go to the Device Manager and  delete the "Multimedia Audio Controller" unknown device (yellow question mark). Once the "Multimedia Audio Controller" device is deleted, click on the action tab in the Device Manager, and choose to look for new hardware. I tried this, but the"Multimedia Audio Controller" device showed up again, however I left the the Intel Audio Device disabled. After I installed the correct drivers, I went back and enabled the Intel Audio Device just out of curiosity to see if it would affect the Soundmax drivers, but it did not. (but I went back and disabled it again to make sure the IRQ was available.

Hopefully this will help anyone still holding onto their d530 XP computer and upgrading it to Windows 7.

ADI SoundMax AC97 Integrated Source: https://adi-soundmax-ac97-driver.jaleco.com/download Source: https://adi-soundmax-ac97-driver.jaleco.com/downloadS