Acronis TI Hades

I purchased Acronis TI 8.0 on 9/6/2005 due to good reports heard about this product. Prior to that, while reviewing the trial version of the Corporate version, I had created the Acronis Secure Zone and found that it had overwritten my MBR and Sector 0 on my HD without creating a backup first. I wrote to support at that time and never received a response. After creating the zone, I found that my HD was failing with a smart drive error.

Due to the lack of support, I decided to purchase the Acronis TI 8.0 home edition and upon receiving my new HD I did a full drive image to the new HD only to find that the Disk clone image did not copy the MBR and Sector 0 either. On 9/20/2005 I recieved notice that 9.0 was out and could download a free upgrade. After downloading the file twice, finding that the install will remove the 8.0 version, the install will go to 85% and hang.

At that point I again attempted to contact tech support and included the report file as requested. Fortunately I did finally get a response from tech support; unfortunately I have been so unlucky at to get Konstantin Karikov to whom apparently does not read any of the information given to him and just throws inane answers out to the unsuspecting public.

I see from this forum that others have also recieved ridiculous responses from Konstantin and my hope is that ANYONE else can assist with the issues I'm experiencing and/or does anyone else find this "support" to be appalling or am I being overly critical? Below are the accumulative emails:

Me:
I installed Acronis True Image onto my primary system with the intent of purchasing the Corporate version of the software. I was extremely disappointed to find that creating the Acronis partition for system restore had overwritten my boot sector without creating a backup first and was further disappointed to find that upon doing a Disk Restore, the boot record was not created onto the new drive containing the Acronis’ hidden non-DOS directory. I had written to both technical support and the sales rep responsible for my account (Reginald Fallen) but did not ever receive a response to my support request. Being disappointed with the boot sector problems and the lack of technical support, I opted to purchase the Home edition instead to backup my primary system only.

I received an email today stating that being as I had just purchased 8.0 less than a month ago; I was eligible for the 9.0 upgrade. Upon retrieving the upgrade, I found that the “upgrade” will only uninstalled my purchased 8.0 and refuses to complete the installation. In the hopes that your product isn’t disappointing me further and that I just got a corrupted download, I made the attempt to re-download your product only to find that the download no longer appears to be an option.

I am, therefore, requesting support for both problems now (boot and upgrade). I am (or should I say was) using 8.0 with the latest upgrade as of 9/6/05. My serial number was #####-#####-#####-#####-##### for 8.0 and is #####-#####-#####-#####-##### for the 9.0 download. I am using XP SP2.

Them:
Thank you for using Acronis True Image. (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/)!

Please be aware that MBR will be imaged only in the case if you create an image of the whole hard drive. In the case if you create an image only a system partition you should re-write the MBR after restoring the image.

You can re-write MBR in one of the following ways:

Windows 95/98/ME – boot from WindowsStartup Disk and run "fdisk /mbr" command; Windows 2000/XP – boot from Windows Installation Disc into Recovery Console and run "fixmbr" command.

Please also be aware that Acronis True Image 8.0 and Acronis True Image 9.0 cannot be installed on the same machine in the same time.

Thank you.
--
Sincerely yours,
Konstantin Karikov

Acronis, Inc.
395 Oyster Point Blvd., Suite 115
South San Francisco, CA 94080 USA
http://www.acronis.com

Acronis Customer Service Department
e-mail: support@acronis.com

Me
Hello Konstantin,

Please be aware that I DID do a whole HD image and it did NOT create the MBR that was on the old HD. Also, I am aware of why 8.0 uninstalled... my concern is that 9.0 never completed the installation. I am further concerned that I am no longer able to re-download 9.0 in case the issue had to do with a corrupted download. Could you please assist with the issues instead of re-iterating the information you had already been given?

Me:
I still have not received a response to my response regarding the installation issue. After version 9 uninstalls version 8, it will get to 85% installed and then stop. I have tried the installation on different drives, different settings, etc and still no go. Could someone PLEASE look into why version 9 won’t install onto my system?

Them:

Could you please do the following in order to check out the integrity of the installation package?

- Download the checksum utility from http://www.acronis.com/files/support/xcsc.zip
- Unpack and run the application and click on the ellipsis sign to browse and select the installation package you downloaded;
- Ckick "Start" button;
- The MD5 value for Acronis True Image 8.0 (trial version) must be 2e4ed1c1cdb365c48e2a732628492c35

If the MD5 value is not 2e4ed1c1cdb365c48e2a732628492c35 then you need to re-download the trial version.

Thank you.
--
Sincerely yours,
Konstantin Karikov

Acronis, Inc.
395 Oyster Point Blvd., Suite 115
South San Francisco, CA 94080 USA
http://www.acronis.com


Me:
Excused me... but I do NOT have a Trial version of 8.0. I purchased and installed the Full blown version of TI 8.0.

Them:
The MD5 value for Acronis True Image 8.0 must be 76930b48712df673ca5fc5770eedf838

If you want to install Acronis True Image 9.0 then please download the latest (2259) build from http://download.acronis.com/ul/t/o/a/d/sqngbxckbzhmahqzxjcf/trueimage9.0.2259_s_en.exe and try to install it.

Thank you.
--
Sincerely yours,
Konstantin Karikov

Acronis, Inc.
395 Oyster Point Blvd., Suite 115
South San Francisco, CA 94080 USA
http://www.acronis.com

 

Calligia thanks for your post! I did the same image of my hd running XP and now receive an "MBR Error 2". So I now have an idea what happened to my system based on your post...but I have no idea how to fix it. I guess I will send Support a message but I'm a novice and don't have the expertise you have...and since they didn't understand your detailed e-mails I may be lost. I just hate this!

 

Gabby,

The MBR 2 error you're recieving is stating that you had 2 Master Boot Records on your HD. If you don't have any information you needed (such as I did... my Dell image for my HD could only be restored as long as my MBR remained in tact) then you can restore the MBR with
1. Acronis' MBR restore tool locate at www.acronis.com/files/support/mbrautowrite_en.exe
2. get a 98 boot disk (XP's boot disk doesn't allow this functionality) boot too it and then at the command prompt type "fdisk /mbr"

The third option, which I don't recommend for newbies, is to attempt XP's Recovery Console. Information on how is located at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314058

 

This is no attempt to answer your problems, but I would just point out for those users who may be just be computer users rather than system h'experts , that some brand name manufacturers such as Dell, Compaq/HP and IBM often have a hidden diagnostics partition on the harddrive. Which can cause some third party software to do strange things and even worse, the version of the OS has been OEM'd towards expecting certain behind the scenes things to happen or the BIOS expects to find certain things lurking.

The result can be apparent failure of the 3rd party software or a clone/re-install appears to fail.

Colin