SQL Server 2012, Not able to restore the database from .bak file

I have a SQL Server database on my server and I've taken a backup of it. When I try to restore it to a local machine it is throwing me an error and the process is terminating abnormally,

I have created a new empty database in my local machine and trying to restore the .bak into this database with the following code:

RESTORE FILELISTONLY FROM DISK = 'C:\Users\user\Documents\Downloads\LiveDB.bak' 

To get LogicalName for both datafile and logfile and I got the error as follows:

Msg 3241, Level 16, State 13, Line 1
The media family on device 'C:\Users\user\Documents\Downloads\LiveDB.bak' is incorrectly formed. SQL Server cannot process this media family.
Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
RESTORE DATABASE is terminating abnormally.

What is this error causing?

If this is the wrong way to restore a database from a backup file, can someone tell me the step by step procedure to get it working.

Thanks in advance.

2 Answers

This is almost certainly due to the server versions being different. You will get this message if you attempt to restore the database from a newer version of SQL Server to an older version - this is not possible to do. To check the versions, run this command on both servers:

SELECT @@VERSION 

Compare the results and make sure the server which you are restoring to is the same version or newer than where the backup was taken.

My mistake was I was restoring from a differential backup instead of a full backup.