full pc image

I made one and the vista recovery sees it, but now my problem. I had a full system meltdown and i was actually gladd i tried out this part, so here goes nothing:)
I have the imagefile ona extrernal drive and wanted to put it back<---read win xp sp2/ upgrade version and all my data)
All went well untill it actually started and i got the error about the media, not sure wich media its reffering too but im stuck. Any thoughts would be appriciated