Vista Home Premium file restore fails

I have used the Vista "backup and restore centre" to create backup files on
my external USB drive.. Using windows explorer I can seen the files and extract a single file so the data really does exist on the USB drive


I have re-installed windows Vista Home Premium and service pack 2


When I select advanced restore and then "files from a backup made on different computer" the external drive is visible and two backups can be seen

on the next screen "Select the date to restore from" all the entries show "backup location not available"


If I ignore this and continue the error message is 0x8100001A

I'm aware of KB940263 and have therefore recreated the mediaid.bin file using the utility "sdutil" as described in

Procedure to Rebuild MediaID.bin for Restoring Backups - Vista Forums

This appears to work as no DOS error message were seen and the "created" date of file has been update.

I know Vista creates log files of attempts to restore, is it possible to use this to determine the problem?



I have a large backup and manually extracting files will take weeks so I'm really keen to fine an alternative approach

What to do next - all help appreciated



Teka