Acronis System Recovery Manage Kills WinXP Boot

I am trying to create a secure zone on a computer, and after I do it has a problem booting up Windows XP.

I am running Windows XP Pro w/SP 2, on a 40 GB drive with 1 partion C: formatted with NTFS and a DVD-ROM Drive. No USB drives on the machine. I am using the latest verion of True Image Home v9 from July 2006.

On my first Attempt I setup the secure zone from the Rescue CD, and it created it without a problem. But when I rebooted, after the "Press F11..." timedout the screen said something about NT not finding windows on disk (0) partition (1) . So I booted from the CD and removed the secure zone. Problem fix, windows now will boot up .

On my second attempt, I created the secure zone from inside Windows XP. I rebooted everything worked fine. I rebooted again and hit F11, I did a back to the secure zone from the recover manager (the backup worked fine). I rebooted and when the "hit F11" timed out the screen turned black . I rebooted, hit F11 and choose to continue into Windows and got a Black screen.

I popped in a special CD with NTLDR and a BOOT.INI file, I booted from the CD and choose to go into windows and it worked fine

Apparentlly, when I install the Acronis Recovery Manager in the Sercure Zone the OS manager it installs is not able to boot up Windows XP.

What is going on here?

I want to be able to boot from the CD create a Secure Zone and be able to hit F11 to recover that saved backup.

Follow up: I download the fixmbr CD from the "Read this first", just to see if it fixed the problem. It overwrote the MBR and reset to point to XP. Xp is not correctly loading, but I am no longer getting a "Hit F11..." message. (This is what I expected to happen, but not what I want. I went ahead and loaded Windows and ran True Image, I deactivate Recover Manager and Activated it again. Now when I boot up I get the F11 prompt, but I get a black screen when trying to boot up windows. Just like before.

 

Is this a brand name computer, with an OEM provided image hidden on the harddrive?


Colin

 

It is a Medion aka Disney Dream PC, it does not have a hidden partition for recovery it comes with a recovery DVD. Before I installed the True Image, I wiped out the whole harddrive and reinstalled with a clean copy of Windows, I then installed some Apps on it. I want to make a backup of it now, while it has not been touch by my son, so that it he breaks a program I can just restore the whole C:\ Partition from the Secure zone.

Ruben

 

Yup I know Medion, (German manufacturer, used mainly by Aldi Supermarkets.)

The only things I can think of are;

1. The BIOS is Medion specific and can't fin where it hinks the bootsector/files are.

2. More likely perhaps, whilst the boot sector et al is correct, the boot config is awry. Have you tried running fixboot or bootcfg.

The problem is both of these commands are only available whilst in the recovery console. Though if you have the CD then of course that is easy to get to.

Colin

 

Let me be more specific the problems seems to be with the Linux Version of the program. When I run it from inside windows it works fine. It will boot up correctly when using recovery manager (so it is not a bios issue). When I use the Linux version of the program to create the Secure Zone + Recovery manager, or to back up my main partition. It breaks the ability of booting into windows, when you see the "hit F11..." message.


The work around is to use the windows version, but I would like to be able to used the Linux version too...

 

Ahh I'd misunderstood, thought you couldn't boot at all!

Have you tried either, reburning a rescue CD just in case something is corrupted (I always use a RW for my experiments) or perhaps redownload and re-install just in case something is screwy with the install file.

If all that fails, then there would seem to be something Medion specific that the Linux kernel or drivers can't handle.

If that is the case, then I can only suggest raising a support ticket with Acronis.

Colin

 

Hello Ruben,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the delay with the response.

I'm afraid that we have not heard about such problems of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home before and therefore cannot suggest a solution or workaround immediately.

In the first place, please make sure that you use the latest build (3677) of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home which is available for downloading in the Product Updates section of your account at Acronis web site.

You can find the full version name and build number by going to Help -> About... menu in the main program window.

To get access to updates you should create an account then log in and use your serial number to register the software.

Please uninstall any previously installed build by following Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Acronis True Image, prior to installing build 3677.

Note that you should create new Bootable Rescue CD after installing the update.


If the problem still persists with the latest build (3677) of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home then your issue requires a deeper investigation and I'm afraid the only way to proceed is to reproduce it. I hope it is not too difficult for you, especially since you can easily recover your system to it's bootable state using the recovery DVD provided by the computer manufacturer, if I understood you correctly.

Could you please do the following?

- Boot into Windows and create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

- Launch the Acronis Report Utility once more and select the "Create Bootable Floppy" option;

- Insert a blank floppy disk in the A: drive and proceed with creation of the bootable floppy;

- Reproduce the problem;

- Boot the computer having the issue from the beforehand created diskette and wait for the report creation process to finish;

- Repair the computer, boot into Windows and collect the report file from the floppy;

In case you do not have a floppy drive we recommend that you borrow one in order to create Acronis Report. If it is not possible please connect the hard drive containing non-bootable operating system to any other "healthy" computer, i.e. computer which can successfully boot into Windows, and create a report from within Windows as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

- Rename the reports collected to report_before.txt and report_after.txt accordingly.

Then please submit a request for technical support. Provide the files and information collected in your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the most suitable solution as soon as possible.

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov