Windows Vista/7 – How to Restore .BKF Files Using NTBackup

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There are so many users who back up their data using the NTBackup Tool in Windows XP, then clean install/upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows Vista and later realize that Windows 7/Vista do not include the NTBackup Tool to restore the image.

Also, Microsoft haven’t released the NT Backup Restore Utility for Windows 7 yet (should be out soon), as they released for Windows Vista. If you have critical data contained in a NTBackup image (.BKF) and want to restore it in Windows 7, then this article is for you.

This article assumes two things:

You don’t have access to a Windows XP computer to restore the image.
You don’t want to wait until NT Backup-Restore Utility for Windows 7 is released.

The NTBackup executable runs just fine in Windows Vista and Windows 7, provided that the supporting DLLs (given below) are available in the same folder where NTBackup.exe is present. The two DLL files are:

ntmsapi.dll
vssapi.dll

If you run NTBackup.exe without these two modules, these errors would pop-up.

The program can’t start because NTMSAPI.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.
The ordinal 3 could not be located in the dynamic link library VSSAPI.DLL.

After searching the web, I came across the NTBackup files which were packaged within a .cab file meant for use as Bart PE Plugin.

Restoring a .BKF File Using NTBackup

1. Download nt5backup.cab from Plugins by STSanford.

2. Extract the files inside the cabinet file to a folder of your choice.

3. Run the file NTBackup.exe from the folder.

4. NTBackup will indicate that Removable Storage service is not available (removed in Windows Vista & Windows 7). Never mind! This is only required for tape backups. Click OK.