AOMEI Backupper Help Guides

In our daily life and work, our systems may crash due to virus attacks, hard disk corruption, etc. If your system crashes, restoring the system from a system backup is a better solution rather than reinstalling the OS.

System restore can be used in the following scenarios:

•  System malfunction: When the computer encounters severe errors, crashes, or fails to start properly, system restore can restore system settings and configurations to fix the system issues.
• Software conflicts: If there are compatibility problems with other programs or the system after installing new software or updating existing software, system restore can revert the system to a state before the installation, eliminating conflicts.
• Malware infection: When the computer is affected by viruses, malware, or ransomware threats, system restore can bring the computer back to an uninfected state, removing malicious software.
• Accidental operations or data loss: If important files or directories are accidentally deleted or system settings are changed leading to data loss, system restore can roll back to the previous state of files and system settings, recovering lost data.
• Test environment restoration: When you need to conduct experiments, install new software, or make configuration changes on the computer, you can perform a system restore to back up the current environment. After completing the operations, you can restore the system to its state before the testing.

How to Restore System with AOMEI Backupper in Windows 10 step by step

Prerequisites for system restore

Before restoration, there are some things you need to know.

• AOMEI Backupper system restore is based on AOMEI Backupper system backup. You should already have at least one system image made by AOMEI Backupper (whatever the source system is, the current crashed one or a system on another computer). Even if you have several Windows backup points, it won't work. AOMEI Backupper does not recognize OS images made by Windows or other software.

• If you haven't created a system backup with AOMEI Backupper, you can create one based on another working system. However, after restoration, the system of the recovered computer will be a copy of the system you just backed up, not the crashed one. You can choose this method if viable.

• Nominally, users should recover using the system Backup image created on their current failed operating system.  If the PC fails to boot or has crashed, you can create a WinPE bootable media using AOMEI Backupper or AOMEI PE Builder on another healthy computer and then boot the crashed PC from the WinPE bootable media to run the system restore under WinPE.

We strongly recommend that users create a WinPE bootable media once they start to use AOMEI products. Such bootable media should be created and kept in a safe place in order to boot a failed computer. Otherwise, not having the required bootable media might result in not being able to recover your computer at all. 

If you don't have these items, please download AOMEI Backupper and prepare what you need.

Detailed steps about how to restore a system backup

Restore System under Windows:

1. In the left tab, select Restore and then click Select Task or Select Image File. Here I take "Select Task" as an example.

2. Select a backup image and click the Next button to recover your system to the point in time the backup was taken.

3. Choose to restore the entire image or part and click Next.

4. In the "Operation Summary" page, preview the operation that will be executed. Then, click Start Restore. Wait for the process to complete, and then click Finish.

• Tips: If the system image is taken from another computer, you should tick "Universal Restore" (paid function) to ensure the system is bootable after recovery.

For further details with screenshots, see: How to Do System Restore.

Restore System under WinPE:

If the PC fails to boot or has crashed, you need to create a WinPE bootable media with AOMEI Backupper and boot your PC into WinPE to run the system restore.

1. Please create a WinPE bootable media using AOMEI Backupper or AOMEI PE Builder on another healthy computer.

2. Then, insert the bootable media into the failed computer and boot from it. (You may need to change the boot sequence and boot mode in the PC's BIOS/UEFI Setup Utility).

3. When the PC boots up successfully, AOMEI Backupper (already installed on the bootable device) will run automatically allowing you to start the system recovery just as the process under Windows.

4. Remove the bootable media and restart your PC after the system restore is finished successfully. (You may still need to change the boot sequence and boot mode in the PC's BIOS/UEFI Setup Utility).