The restoring of hard disk backups starts from DOS mode. This is necessary because in DOS all parts of the operating system are in the main memory and therefore sectors of the hard disk or even the entire hard disk can be overwritten without any problem. As we have said already hard disk backups can only be restored in full at this point in time. This means a hard disk or partition is overwritten during restoration, which means the loss of all data on it! Windows could never be overwritten in this way when running. A complete system failure would be the inevitable consequence. To cut a long story short: the restoring of Nero disk backups has to be done under DOS.
Of course the CD/DVD-ROM drive has to be accessible under DOS so that the Nero restore program 'NRESTORE.EXE' can also read the backup CDs. This status can be achieved either by starting the PC using a DOS startup disk (of course with suitable driver for your current CD/DVD-ROM drive in the Config.Sys and the suitably filed program MSCDEX in the Autoexec.bat) or by starting a suitable CD with startup capability (tip: Windows 98 startup disk includes drivers for all Atapi CD/DVD-ROM drives and drivers for many SCSI controllers and SCSI CD/DVD-ROM drives).
It is now possible to start 'NRESTORE.EXE' in the DOS input request. The first backup CD should be inserted into the CD/DVD-ROM drive now, if not already inserted, and the drive letter of the CD/DVD-ROM drive selected before you enter the command "Nrestore" and press "Enter". This is possible with the help of the cursor keys and the Return key. Then, using the Tab key it is possible to skip from one operating element to the next.
Now select the target partition and finally begin restoring the backup. While the restoration is in progress the current percentage progress is shown on a status bar at the bottom of the screen. All CDs of the backup are requested and played back one after the other. At the end of the restoration process you must reboot the PC and "Nrestore" will be triggered automatically.
See also:
Temporary restrictions on Nero hard disk backups