A slightly roundabout method of restoring from snapshot64 (http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en) backup images: 1. On a Windows workstation, in Computer Management, right-click Disk Management > Create VHD and create a virtual disk slightly larger than the source machine's disk. 2. With the VHD attached, run snapshot64.exe and go through the restore options. Select the VHD as the destination and either do a full disk restore (possible if the snapshot was made with version 1.44 or later), or right-click the disk in the restore target selection window and click "restore partition table", "restore signature", etc. 3. After the restore imaging is complete and all partitions have been done, detach the VHD. 4. Create a local VM using the VHD, and verify that the boot process gets as far as "loading windows". If you get "missing operating system", a partition or bootloader was not restored correctly: - go back and check that you did "restore MBR" and also use the "check boot" command in snapshot64's disk restore target context menu - ensure that the "system reserved" partition (usually 100-250 MB, before the main system partition) was in the image and was restored. If it wasn't backed up, you may be able to copy one from another machine with a similar version of Windows. 5. Once a local VM is bootable from the VHD (it will probably only get as far as a STOP 7b blue screen of death; that's OK and somewhat expected), either write the VHD out to a real disk (if restoring to a physical machine) or convert the VHD to a vmdk file for vmware. This can be done with VirtualBox and probably VMware Workstation or Fusion. In VirtualBox the relevant command is: VBoxManage.exe clonehd --format vmdk j:\disk1.vhd j:\disk1.vmdk 6. Create a VMware VM with a small disk, then delete the small disk vmware created and upload the vmdk file. 7. If you created a dynamic VHD rather than a fixed-size one, the resulting vmdk will need to be converted on the ESXi host. Connect to the ESXi host with ssh and do: cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/ vmkfstools -i disk1.vmdk disk1-esxi.vmdk 8. If the source machine used SCSI disks, check that the resulting vmdk is a SCSI disk -- the vmdk on VMware ESXi comprises two files, a small descriptor file and the large disk data file: # ls -l -rw------- 1 root root 75161927680 Nov 29 17:16 disk1-flat.vmdk -rw------- 1 root root 798 Nov 29 17:16 disk1.vmdk # vi disk1.vmdk ... ddb.adapterType = "ide" ... Change "ide" to "lsilogic". 9. Attach the resulting vmdk to the VM and try to boot. 10. If you get a blue screen of death, reset the VM and mash F8 to get the Windows boot menu, then choose "disable automatic restart" so you can read the STOP error. If the STOP error is 7b (which is "inaccessible boot device"), see "fixing STOP 7b on boot after cloning, restoring.txt".