Acronis OS Selector - BIG PROBLEM

[Nedwob]

I had set up a new PC with 3 primary partitions, P1, P2 and P3, and an extended partition with several logicals.

I use Acronis True Image and Acronis Disk Director to handle disks and images, and rate them very highly.

I had put Vista into P1, Xp Pro into P3, and P2 was left for testing. I was using BootMagic as the bootmanager, with no problems, but Bootmagic needs a FAT32 partition, so I thought I would try Acronis OS Selector.

I installed it, but didn't like it at all. I (tried to) uninstalled it - but had to search the web to get a full(ish) solution to removing it.

After this, Vista wouldn't boot. The Vista DVD would hang up part way into the install - so I couldn't do an install or repair.

Suspecting some corruption on track 0 or the MBR, I used the Acronis Edit function to set track 0 to all zeroes (except for the first sector, which wasn't available in the editor).

This didn't help.

Further research suggested that I replace the Boot Sector more aggressively (http://neosmart.net/blog/2005/repairing-a-fubard-master-boot-record/)

but this didn't help either.

I was able to install Xp Pro OK, so I did this and tried a Vista install from within Xp - but the Vista install still 'hung'.

I began to wonder if the BIOS had somehow got corrupted, or perhaps a memory fault had occured by coincidence, but as a last resort, before testing the hardware, or flashing the BIOS, I made the following alteration -

As I had two hard disks on the machine, the second one being all logical partitions, I swapped the drives and created a primary on the (new) first drive.

Vista then installed without a problem!!

So the Acronis OS Selector has done something really nasty to my original first hard disk.

Can Acronis suggest what has gone wrong and how I can get it to work properly again please.

Nedwob

[Nedwob]

Since posting the first comments, I have made a discovery that may be the reason that restored Vista Images and the Vista DVD wouldn't work, so I may have been unfair to OS Selector, although I still feel that the problems only arose when I tried it and then tried to remove it.

After swapping the drives, and successfully installing Vista to the swapped drive, I shut down as it was late. Next day I opened 'Explorer' in Vista, to examine the drives on the machine, and I found that an extra partition of about 60Gb had appeared on the (original second - now the first) drive. I couldn't access this partition and attempts to access it produced an error message (can't remember exactly what it was - 'bad sector' I think).

I certainly didn't create this partition. When I added this drive to the PC as a second drive a few weeks ago I created just two partitions on the it, of 5 Gb (for the PageFile) and the second one being the remainder of the disk.

Maybe Acronis OS Selector created it ???. Maybe Vista was trying to access it during the non successful installs and image restores. But this still doesn't explain how Vista installed OK when I made this drive the first drive, before I discovered this extra partition.

I deleted this partition and then restored the drives to their original order.

I can now work with the original first drive as it was before I tried OS Selector.

But I still blame Acronis OS selector for causing problems in the first place!

Nedwob

[zygtar]

same problems here. I'm loosing my mind. bad thing there is no help at all in those forums from Acronis people. Partition magic is way to go.