Acknowledgement: Thanks to Iain Jordinson from Windows Rescue in Queensland, Australia for finding this solution!

It is possible to restore an Server 2008 image backup to a Hyper-V VM, but unless you know this trick, you’ll receive this error:

An internal error occurred. The following information might help you resolve the error:
The network path was not found. (0x80070035)

The network path was not found. (0x80070035)

To correctly restore an image backup to a new Hyper-V VM, do the following:

  1. Set up a new host for your machine
  2. Create a new VM from within the Hyper-V Manager console. Create a new virtual hard drive and make sure you set it to a size equal or greater than the hard drive of your old machine
  3. Before starting your new VM, go back to the Hyper-V Manager console, and edit the settings for this VM. Delete the existing network adapter, and add a Legacy Network Adapter Note: If you don’t do this, you’ll receive the error message described above.
  4. Insert the Windows disc in your DVD drive, capture it in your new VM and start the VM
  5. Perform the bare metal restore by choosing to Repair your computer, Complete PC Restore, then Cancel (to ignore the message that no backups could be found), Advanced, then Search for a network backup, and so on.
  6. The restore will start, and the computer will reboot when done.

Explanation: The regular Network Adapter in Hyper-V requires drivers under Server 2008, meaning that unless you have those drivers installed, you won’t be able to see the network. This means that the Windows Recovery Environment cannot use the network card, so you cannot do a bare-metal restore from a UNC path.

The Legacy Network Adapter can be used without drivers, so you can do a bare-metal restore from a UNC path.

My sincere thanks to Iain for figuring this out – after spending the better part of a day on the phone to Microsoft, who said that this could not be done. I’m confident that your efforts here will save many people countless hours of stress!

Posted by Linus

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17 Comments

  1. Mike May 5, 2009 at 6:18 am

    Great info – Presumably you can you revert to vmbusadapter after recovery?

  2. Linus May 8, 2009 at 12:14 am

    Hi – yes, absolutely correct!

  3. sadorak August 10, 2009 at 9:21 am

    I’ tried this but don’t work as i hope… 🙁 …
    In my new VM i create a NIC Legacy but where is connect to? none or phisycal nic?
    When i lunch Windows recovery enviroment and insert UNC path it ask to me credential to access the share backup (site on net share), I insert it and after a few seconds appear the same error ….
    Best regards…

  4. Larry Doyle September 17, 2009 at 1:31 pm

    you should connect the legacy nic to the virtual adaptor configured in hyper-v – then it should pick up DHCP from a server & you can connect to the NAS

  5. doug November 5, 2009 at 4:01 pm

    What is the solution if you do not use a DHCP server or I assume you can just assign an IP after it boots?

  6. Steven July 28, 2010 at 5:50 pm

    We just used your process sucessfully. The only problem we encountered was that it could not find our backup server by name. By using the ip address instead of the server name (ex.\\10.10.10.1\d$\backups) we were able to run the restore sucessfully. Thanks for posting this.

  7. ravi October 28, 2010 at 7:44 am

    thanks mate that is what i am looking for

    cheers:)

  8. tri nguyen August 9, 2011 at 12:02 am

    Thank so much for your solution.but I have problem after restore.
    I just used this way to restore Windows server 2008 R2 from Physical to Hyper_V (successfully ), but it can not restart normal..
    Pls help me how to fix this one..!

    huutri_172002@yahoo.com

  9. tri nguyen August 9, 2011 at 12:05 am

    I run restore successfully ,but it can not start … Please kindly help me this problem?
    Thank a lot !

  10. stuart August 10, 2011 at 12:41 am

    Hi Tri,

    Sorry to hear that you’ve had these issues.

    I’m afraid that I’ll require you to raise a support request with our help desk to get further assistance on this technical issue.
    Please send all details of the issue you’re experiencing to support@backupassist.com so that we can help you further.

    Thank you,
    Stuart
    BackupAssist Support Team

  11. Robin September 21, 2011 at 9:00 am

    I’ve used BackupAssist v6 to image a Windows 2008 physical server onto a NAS box. I’ve then created a new Hyper-V VM on another server and changed the network adapter to the Legacy one in this post but I cannot get the repair process to list any system images from the network location I select. If I type in an incorrect network location then it will error but with the correct location it does not error but does not list any images to restore from. The directory I am trying to restore from lists the following folder structure:
    .catalogues
    Backup 2011-09-17 202526
    Catalog
    ProgramData
    SPPMetaDataCache

    and a file called MediaId

    There are two (C & D drive).vhd files in the Backup 2011-09-17 202526 folder.

    Any ideas ??

    Many thanks

  12. Stuart November 8, 2011 at 7:57 pm

    Hi Robin,

    The files which you’ve listed are usually within the ‘WindowsImageBackup’ folder, which is what’s searched for by Windows Server Backup (wbadmin). Have you tried to search to the network location that contains the WindowsImageBackup folder (not specifically searched for that file) to see if this lists the backups?

    If this doesn’t work, then you may need to contact our support team for further assistance by sending details to support@backupassist.com.

    Thanks,
    Stuart

  13. Robin August 29, 2012 at 7:59 pm

    Hi Stuart,

    Sorry I just realised that I never responded to this at the time and after all it might be useful to others to know the outcome! Thanks very much that worked. I didn’t realise that you need to mount the folder that contains the folder “WindowsImageBackup” rather than the folders that contain the actual backup files.

    Many thanks,

    Robin

  14. Brandi August 30, 2012 at 2:53 am

    Sadly, this resulted in the same error even after using legacy. Bummer! Every time I entered the credentials for the network share, it would connect and after about 15 seconds, it would get the “network path not found” error. Anyone else still having this issue?

  15. Intali September 24, 2012 at 11:24 pm

    Outstanding post. Give us quality like that. Every visitor will benefit from this addition.

  16. Johan Blom November 8, 2012 at 8:04 pm

    I have the same problem with a difference. I want to restore my 2008 R2 server back onto a VMware ESXi 4.1 box and not Hyper-V.
    How can I get past this error.

  17. Restoring SBS Essentials 2011 BMR (Bare Metal Recovery) image backup to Hyper-V VM (Virtual machine) | Keep It Warm October 15, 2013 at 10:08 am

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