Hey guys,
After what may have been a poorly-conceived "upgrade" of one of my client desktops from Win7 pro to Win8.1 Pro, in which I lost all of my installed programs and settings, I spent an hour or two last night trying to restore Win7 from my most recent daily Win Server 2012 essentials backup...without success.
I first tried installing the Win Server Connector software...the installer asked my for a server name or IP address...but said it couldn't find a server at the address I was specifying...even though the remote desktop connection can find the server just fine at that location...
I then created a bootable USB restore stick as instructed at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj713539.aspx#BKMK_CreateBootable . When I tried to boot the desktop from the USB stick, I got a fatal error before the boot environment ever loaded, leading to a reboot. Don't know if it's because Server 2012 essentials doesn't support Win8.1 (does it?) or if it's because the motherboard is UEFI...
So...tonight...I need to either successfully revert my desktop to Win7 from a backup, or I need to accept the fact that I'm now stuck on Win8.1 and re-install all my programs/settings. Is there something I'm missing with the former option? If I go with the latter option, I'm guessing that to reconnect it to the home server will require an upgrade to Server 2012 R2...? If so, I'm okay with the reconfiguring of the server...I just don't know how to deal with changing the domain on all of the client computers, since there's no in-place upgrade path from Server 2012 to 2012 R2...
Nice mess I got myself into, huh?