Problem migrating the system drive from my source NVMe to a new target NVMe: “The external backing provider is not recognized.”

SIW2 said:

It is probably the big guy hdxrt.inf which I might upload for you in a bit.
apparently is realtek 6.0.9167.1

there you go
SER5-Sound.zip

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Man, you are GREAT! =D !!!

@SIW2 I hate to spin your wheels, but I did not use that latest uploaded driver of yours. I sincerely thank you for the effort, and the same sincere appreciation to @Winuser and @Sdowney717 and others who've helped me with this...er..."obstacle." I put off responding until now, Saturday, because I want to write a somewhat extensive post in hopes of assisting others who experience the same Beelink BS I am experiencing.

I walked away from this mess for several days because I just hit my limit. Couldn't take it anymore. Sorry to go incommunicado. After a few days, I sent Beelink Support an email explaining my problem in brief. They sent me a link to drivers. The link didn't work...

I told them so and they sent me a new link, but with ZERO explanation. I downloaded the .zip file, extracted and attempted to use Device Mgr to Update the missing Audio Controller driver. It never worked...

What is WRONG with these people?! And they end every useless, frustrating email with, "Have a nice day!"

By the grace of GOD, I found THIS THREAD on the Beelink Support Forum, which is only a "support" forum because the USERS lend support to one another. The Beelink support reps are a waste-of-typing. The absolute worst I've ever seen.

Helpful USERS in that thread said downloading AMD's own ADRENALIN SOFTWARE (chipset and display drivers) would resolve the issues at hand. Also, see THIS PAGE for the AMD Detect and Install Tool.

IT WORKED!

There are no more "Other Devices" in my Device Mgr list, and everything seems to be working properly (knock wood).

As you know, I was not able to properly clone/migrate the Beelink SER5's Win11 Pro system drive to another drive. The problems I encountered appeared only because I tried to clone the OS; I wonder how many Beelink "ticking timebombs" are out there...?

I believe Beelink installs some half-baked, cut-rate, volume-purchase (Chinese bootleg?) version of Windows on these machines. After fighting with this for more than a week, I finally threw in the towel, reformatted the drive and installed a fresh Windows 11 Pro via the Microsoft website procedure. My inability to access Computer Management, Disk Management and the like went away. I did have a few missing drivers, but the AMD Adrenalin software (and you guys!) sorted all that out. Now (knock wood!) it seems like the system is healthy and clean.

Frankly, I really like this MiniPC. I was (and remain) skeptical, but I didn't want the limitations and high cost of a laptop. This tiny thing frees me from both. I'm not a gamer, so the AMD Ryzen 5700U is amazing for me. It came with a decent 500GB NVMe drive and 16GB of ram. Too good, sez I! It cost me less than $300, and while the costs add up for two monitors, two add'l SSDs and my own custom-built cooling armature, it's still a LOT less expensive than buying a laptop with these features (and a dinky little display that's worthless to me).

Thank you, guys. This has been a very informative (and cathartic) thread for me. I hope it serves others who find themselves dragged down this same rabbit hole.

Tom

sdowney717 said:

Direct from realtek when searched for realtek 6.0.9167.1

realtek does have big driver files.

Oops!

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Thanks, @Sdowney717.
Please see my post #101 above, in response to @SIW2.
Those sentiments apply to you, as well.

Winuser said:

Did you download this?

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Thank you, @Winuser.
You went above and beyond to assist me, and so did others here. In the end, the AMD chipset and display drivers utility solved the missing drivers problem.

Why-oh-why-oh-why does Beelink not simply direct its customers to the AMD website downloads and instructions resources...?!!!

Please see my post #101 above, in response to @SIW2.
Those sentiments apply to you, as well.

BothHands said:

Thank you, @Winuser.
You went above and beyond to assist me, and so did other here. In the end, the AMD chipset and display drivers utility solved the problem.

Why-oh-why-oh-why does Beelink not simply direct its customers to the AMD website downloads and instructions resources...?!!!

Please see my post #101 above, in response to @SIW2.
Those sentiments apply to you, as well.

Click to expand...

I'm glad I was able to contribute and help you get your Mini PC working. I found out about how hard BeeLink made navigating their website when I did a clean install and lost a lot of the drivers. I couldn't even use the Wi-Fi card. I had to use another computer to download the drivers. If I had known, I would have backed up the drivers before doing anything. Seeing as how Windows is very good at installing the needed drivers I didn't think it was necessary. To answer your question. Probably the same reason they make their website hard to locate what your looking for. I still like their Mini PCs though.

Winuser said:

I'm glad I was able to contribute and help you get your Mini PC working. I found out about how hard BeeLink made navigating their website when I did a clean install and lost a lot of the drivers. I couldn't even use the Wi-Fi card. I had to use another computer to download the drivers. If I had known, I would have backed up the drivers before doing anything. Seeing as how Windows is very good at installing the needed drivers I didn't think it was necessary. To answer your question. Probably the same reason they make their website hard to locate what your looking for. I still like their Mini PCs though.

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Ditto. After reading your remarks, I'd say I was lucky. My fresh install of Microsoft Windows 11 (as opposed to whatever mess Beelink installs) did a good job of figuring out and installing drivers. Like you, I do actually like this MiniPC and will keep links to the AMD Adrenelin utility close at hand. If yours is (or are) AMD, save those links. Installing and running Adrenalin was streamlined and automatic. Select a few options, reboot and Ding! All my problems went away! =D

BothHands said:

Ditto. After reading your remarks, I'd say I was lucky. My fresh install of Microsoft Windows 11 (as opposed to whatever mess Beelink installs) did a good job of figuring out and installing drivers. Like you, I do actually like this MiniPC and will keep links to the AMD Adrenelin utility close at hand. If yours is (or are) AMD, save those links. Installing and running Adrenalin was streamlined and automatic. Select a few options, reboot and Ding! All my problems went away! =D

Click to expand...

I went with Intel CPUs. For reasons I can't remember I prefer Intel over AMD.

Greetings,

I stumbled across this forum as I was puzzled by the same issue reported here as I was experiencing with imaging Beelink / Trigkey mini PCs.

I was upgrading a mini PC so I imaged the Trigkey with Macrium and restored to a Beelink SER5. Everything worked as I expected ( I have imaged plenty of machines ) up until I wanted to check Event Viewer, which opened with an error. I was also presented with the external backing provider is not recognised.

Device Manager worked and there were no errors with drivers. It was a 22H2 version of Windows 11 that was factory installed with 21H2 by Trigkey.

Typically I install PCs from a Microsoft ISO but this Trigkey was an OEM install, which I why I believe I experienced this problem.

I did some troubleshooting, downloading drivers direct from AMD https://www.amd.com/en/support/download/drivers.html. I was presented with issues about MSI files missing. I found any upgrade I ran for installing drivers & runtimes was referencing MSI files in a profile path that no longer existed, namely c:\users\administrator. I believe the root cause of these issues were due to the missing path to original installs. I did take some time to recreated c:\users\administrator and populate the original paths with the correct version of MSIs. This worked to a degree but did not resolve the "external backing provider is not recognised"

However, for users who were installing a larger hard drive on the same hardware, I cannot see why Windows would trip up like this. Even if it did not present the "external backing provider is not recognised" error, the Windows install would still be compromised by the inability to install / upgrade drivers and runtimes.

It took less time to wipe & install 24H2 using a MS ISO on the Beelink. One driver was missing and AMD link took care of that https://www.amd.com/en/support/download/drivers.html

Not a solution to the original problem reported but maybe useful info.

In general, I would always wipe a new PC and install Windows with the most recent Microsoft ISO....plenty of good reasons and these days, the official ISOs are so easy to obtain and most hardware has a digital ID so there is no need to worry about product keys.

LL

korgua said:

Greetings,

I stumbled across this forum as I was puzzled by the same issue reported here as I was experiencing with imaging Beelink / Trigkey mini PCs.

I was upgrading a mini PC so I imaged the Trigkey with Macrium and restored to a Beelink SER5. Everything worked as I expected ( I have imaged plenty of machines ) up until I wanted to check Event Viewer, which opened with an error. I was also presented with the external backing provider is not recognised.

Device Manager worked and there were no errors with drivers. It was a 22H2 version of Windows 11 that was factory installed with 21H2 by Trigkey.

Typically I install PCs from a Microsoft ISO but this Trigkey was an OEM install, which I why I believe I experienced this problem.

I did some troubleshooting, downloading drivers direct from AMD https://www.amd.com/en/support/download/drivers.html. I was presented with issues about MSI files missing. I found any upgrade I ran for installing drivers & runtimes was referencing MSI files in a profile path that no longer existed, namely c:\users\administrator. I believe the root cause of these issues were due to the missing path to original installs. I did take some time to recreated c:\users\administrator and populate the original paths with the correct version of MSIs. This worked to a degree but did not resolve the "external backing provider is not recognised"

However, for users who were installing a larger hard drive on the same hardware, I cannot see why Windows would trip up like this. Even if it did not present the "external backing provider is not recognised" error, the Windows install would still be compromised by the inability to install / upgrade drivers and runtimes.

It took less time to wipe & install 24H2 using a MS ISO on the Beelink. One driver was missing and AMD link took care of that https://www.amd.com/en/support/download/drivers.html

Not a solution to the original problem reported but maybe useful info.

In general, I would always wipe a new PC and install Windows with the most recent Microsoft ISO....plenty of good reasons and these days, the official ISOs are so easy to obtain and most hardware has a digital ID so there is no need to worry about product keys.

Click to expand...

HELLO ALL ... I too have been struggling with trying to successfully clone my beelink minis12 NVMe... all to no good...tried Mac Refelct and Disk Genius and Mini Tool Partition...all result in the same dreaded error message upon launching Disk Mgr. The fault is obviously the Win11 os that Beelink is installing on the NVMe...and we can't fix that!!! So my question....is it true that one does not need a Windows Key # to install an ISO copy of Win 11? IE, it will still work w/out having a KEY? Many Many thanks...

Bobbyp28 said:

LL

HELLO ALL ... I too have been struggling with trying to successfully clone my beelink minis12 NVMe... all to no good...tried Mac Refelct and Disk Genius and Mini Tool Partition...all result in the same dreaded error message upon launching Disk Mgr. The fault is obviously the Win11 os that Beelink is installing on the NVMe...and we can't fix that!!! So my question....is it true that one does not need a Windows Key # to install an ISO copy of Win 11? IE, it will still work w/out having a KEY? Many Many thanks...

Click to expand...

you can find and note down your product key first if you wish.

but a vast majority of the time the product key is a digital key to register Windows and is stored within the system.
best of luck, Steve ..

most likely msdm table in the firmware on that beelink

you can have a look with nir sofer's firmwaretablesview

Ok... as noted in this thread, I have given UP on cloning the NVMe that ships w/ the Beelink MiniS12 AND I have Win10 now successfully installed (via the Win10 set up on a usb stick) and working well [except for Audio/Sound]...

In Device Mgr..all the drivers...all say perfectly "updated" ..Including "Display" [Intel UHD Graphics]

I've tried six or seven ways to Sunday installing a host of audio drivers that I thought might snap it into working condition....no luck...obviously none of them were appropriate.

I do have Audio Drivers and Display drivers installed and supposed they are the "Best" ones for my Beelink MiniS12....

Any advice on how to flush out these imposter Drivers...and then find and load/launch the "correct" one....

Many Thanks to all you !!!!!!!!!!!!

this maybe of help with the driver issue.

best of luck, Steve ..

XxXxX said:

this maybe of help with the driver issue.

Release DriverStore Explorer v0.11.92 · lostindark/DriverStoreExplorer

Add support for extension id and improve logging. Update dependency packages. Turkish Language.

github.com

best of luck, Steve ..

Click to expand...

Thanks Steve....I gave the url a look/see...but wasn't sure what it was trying to tell me????? I'll study it some more....I've never had such a hard time finding out how and what the correct "sound" driver should be for a PC.... thanks to all that offer help!!!!!!!!