When Windows Backup (7) Insists on Including the Wrong Drive: A Deep Dive

I recently spent far too many hours wrestling with an odd behavior in Windows 11:
when creating a System Image Backup with the built-in Backup and Restore (Windows 7) tool, Windows insisted on including my D: drive as part of the “system image.”

The problem?

  • My OS lives on C: (NVMe).

  • EFI and Recovery partitions are correct.

  • D: is just a data/games disk.
    Yet the backup wizard grayed it out as “System” and demanded to include it.

Chasing Ghosts

Like any good sysadmin, I went through the usual suspects:

  • BCD (Boot Configuration Data):
    bcdedit /enum all → no references to D:.

  • VSS (Volume Shadow Copy):
    vssadmin list shadowstorage → nothing allocated on D:.

  • Mount points and recovery:
    mountvol showed C:, EFI, and Recovery only.
    WinRE was on the right recovery partition.

Still, the backup wizard stubbornly listed D:.

The Smoking Gun: CBS Registry Entries

After some deeper digging, I hit the jackpot:
the Component Based Servicing (CBS) registry hive contained hundreds of stale entries like:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Component Based Servicing\Packages\...
    InstallLocation    REG_SZ    \\?\D:\wd\compilerTemp\...

At some point, Windows Update had used D: as a scratch/temp directory.
CBS dutifully recorded those paths as part of the “system.”
So when Backup scanned the servicing database, it decided D: must be critical.

The Fix

The key was forcing CBS to rebuild itself:

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
sfc /scannow

Patience paid off: it eventually finished, cleaned up the junk, and a reboot later…

The backup wizard no longer forced D: as “System.”

Running:

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

Great success!

Lessons Learned

  1. Windows Backup (Windows 7) is ancient.
    It keys off CBS, BCD, and a variety of heuristics. If anything in your system state points to a drive, it might get flagged as “System.”
  2. It’s not always just boot data.
    Services installed on another drive, drivers, scheduled tasks, even leftover registry entries can make a disk appear “critical.”
  3. The only truth in Windows is the Registry.
    On Linux, you’d search /etc/.
    On Windows, if you want the real answer to “why does the OS think this drive matters?” →
    grep the damn registry.
reg query HKLM /f "D:\" /s
  1. That’s how I found the culprit.

Should You Bother?

Honestly, Microsoft hasn’t touched this tool in years.
For imaging, you’re usually better off with Veeam Agent which has a free full blown community edition! , https://archive.org/details/Macrium_Reflect_Free_Latest, or some other recent tool. They let you pick exactly which partitions matter.

But if you’re stubborn (like me) or want the satisfaction of making Windows behave:

  • clean up CBS,
  • check the registry,
  • and remember: if a disk shows up as “System,” don’t just trust Disk Management — chase the references until you kill them.

Final Word

This bug wasn’t about bootloaders or UEFI quirks. It was about Windows Update leaving crumbs in CBS.
Once those registry ghosts were gone, Backup behaved.

So, next time you’re fighting Windows Backup…
Search the registry first. Always.

That’s All Folks 😀

Presonus Eris 3.5 Repair | Crackling / Popping / Hissing noises!

My barely 3-year-old Presonus Eris 3.5 monitors have started making crackling, popping, and hissing noises—depending on their mood!

Two capacitors have gone bad, and the local distributor asked for $200 for the repair, whereas a new pair nowadays costs only $100.

The distributor in a neighbouring country mentioned that there’s no service available for these monitors, claiming they are ‘commercially developed in a production line,’ although the meaning behind that statement is a bit unclear to me.

It seems they might be suggesting that these monitors are mass-produced and not designed for individual repair or servicing. I don’t see how that can be the case, but let’s move along, like obedient citizens in a world of placebo abundance 😀

If you’re facing a similar problem and have access to a soldering iron (or know someone who does :P), consider replacing the two brown capacitors with 24v 1000μF ones, or any other bulging in the cap ones that seem suspect. Good new parts are available everywhere nowadays and cost less than 50cents each…

The problematic capacitors in my case were the bulging brown ones marked with the purple arrows in the following image.

Needless to say, if you decide to tackle the project, do so at your own risk. The circuit involves a high current mains side, so take all necessary precautions to protect yourself.

Have a good one!

Milling The Spider Vanes On VIXEN VISAC VC200L TELESCOPE

This video demonstrates the detailed process of machining with a mill the spider vanes (secondary holder) of a VIXEN VISAC VC200L Telescope.

After carefully centring the spider vanes on the milling table, the procedure is straightforward if done with care and produces excellent results.

Read on for more astronomical information 🙂

The Vixen VC200L telescope features VISAC (Vixen Sixth-Order Aspheric Cassegrain) optical system which is free of coma, field curvature, spherical and chromatic aberration.

The telescope has an enviable reputation for its flat field for astrophotography, producing exceptionally sharp images with no chromatic aberration due to the VISAC design.

The most significant complaint people have about the Vixen VC200L is the thickness of the spider vanes. They are 6mm thick, probably to achieve good results in the casting aluminium process.

This leads to, fat rhomboid – square core for brighter stars instead of the actual – desired centre/rounded. At 2mm, the vanes are still very strong, and no detrimental effect can be seen regards to holding the secondary mirror in place, being still solid as a rock at 2mm thickness.

The obstruction of the 6mm spider vanes is also significantly more in astronomical terms. By milling out 71mm(length) X 4mm(width) X sides, we are gaining back 1136sq/mm, which is roughly the size of the secondary mirror!

We are counting photons with these instruments, after all, so every bit of light/aperture helps 😛

Thanks for watching!

Calculator – Cutting large radius on a mill

Milling a large radius on a milling machine does not have to be limited by the size of the rotary table.


When tilting the head of the mill with a large cutter, be it a boring bar, fly cutter etc, the resulting cut is an ellipsis. This technique has been used for a long time by machinists before PC’s, CNC’s and other technological aids made their appearance in the industry.

The problem (or not 🙂 depending on the specifications tolerances) with the existing literature (such as the Machinery’s Handbook and others) is that the formula being used assumes that the desired width of said large radius is 0!

The following calculator averages the angle required to accommodate the width as well to provide a better approximation. By using the following calculator you can approximate a true circle radius with an accuracy of few microns.

Check it out – Large radius milling calculator

Find the detailed equations/maths for it here by Dr. Dimitris Skliros

Have fun!