Bootable CD for Restore not working in full mode

I have Acronis True Image Home (ver 10) installed on my computer hard drive, which runs under Windows XP Pro (SP2 and all current MS updates).

For a backup device I have an Acomdata 160GB External Hard drive connecting to a USB port. I can successfully backup the full Windows XP Pro computer to the Acomdata, doing a "full" backup.

I use ATIH to create a bootable CD. I want to be able to boot from that CD in the event that I ever have a hard-drive crash on my PC and need to replace the hard drive with a new one. Then of course I would want to do a full restore from the backup on the Acomdata External Hard Drive.

The bootable CD boots up okay and shows the initial menu. I can choose either "safe" mode or "full" mode. I need to be able to run in full mode in order to access the Acomdata USB hard drive. The safe mode has no USB driver.

But if I choose the "full" mode, the monitor soon goes blank and the PC just hangs, with the hard-drive light off. It has either crashed or gone into an infinite loop. This means that ATIH will not do the basic job for which I bought it.

Is there any fix possible? Any way to get Acronis tech support to help me solve this issue?

 

What are your computer specs? Do you know the chipset?
Make sure you have the latest build of TI 10 (4,940).

Have your tried the "safe" mode to see if your USB drive shows up? Some newer motherboards support USB hard drives in BIOS and will show up in the "safe" mode of TI. It usually uses USB 1 speeds, but it's better than nothing.

If you have another internal hard drive you could save your backup images there and restore from that to the primary drive. This is also faster than using USB 2. You can keep a copy on your USB drive as extra insurance.

If this doesn't work, then you have two choices. Submit a request to Acronis support requesting a custom ISO that supports your hardware or creating a BartPE boot cd that contains the Windows drivers.

If you're interested in creating a BartPE cd, mustang has created a how-to to help at this link.

 

Had the same problem with my rig. The bootable cd would boot to a blank screen. Made a new bootable cd but instead of accepting the default options and writing "Safe Mode" and Full Mode" to the cd, deselected "Safe Mode" and proceded with "Full Mode" only. Subsequently cd has worked flawlessly on several "bare meta" test restores.

 

MudCrab -- Thanks for your response.

I do have the 4940 build of ATIH. After booting from the CD created by ATIH, I tried the safe mode, but my USB drive did not show up. So my current status is that I only can access the External HD when running under Windows XP. But if I need to restore Windows XP from the External CD then I have a problem.

I do have a second internal hard drive, and I have been backing up the primary hard drive (using ATIH) to that second hard drive, as well as backing it up to the External USB HD. I want to use the External HD for off-site backup (in a bank SD box).

The motherboard is:
ASUS M2NSLI-32 SLI DeLuxe with NVIDIA nFORCE 590 SLI MCP Chipset

Concerning the approach of building the BartPE CD, and please excuse me if I am dense, I am not clear as to how I would do the restore from the External harddrive to my C: drive. Assuming that either (1) the C: drive had crashed, or else (2) the OS got trashed, then the purpose of the restore is to rebuild the Windows XP OS on C:.

Looking at the applications on the CD that was built by ATIH, the application programs are Command Line based. So after I boot from the BartPE CD, can I run the command line program and then use that to run the restore applications? Is it possible to restore a Windows XP OS over the top of the files that are running Windows XP during the restore? In other words, could I install a basic Windows XP Pro OS on the C: drive, install ATIH, and then use that to restore the "real" Windows XP OS that I want from my External HD?

Thanks. hectortc

 

hectortc:

The BartPE boot cd runs a "Preinstallation Edition" of Windows XP off of a cd. In other words it uses all the Windows drivers and you can add your own, such as RAID, network support, etc. if the default Windows drivers don't work or the hardware is too new to have been included on the Windows installation cd.

It is just another type of "rescue cd". You'd connect your USB drive, boot from the BartPE cd, run TI (it runs the Windows version of TI) and follow through on the restore normally. There are no command line programs to run or worry about.

I use the BartPE cd almost exclusively on my computer as it's much faster than the Acronis rescue cd (especially for USB drives) and also allows me to switch between DD and TI as necessary without have to exit and reboot.

 

Hello hectortc,

Have you tried booting from the Acronis Rescue CD and applying the acpi=off noapic workaround as detailed at II. in the Acronis Support sticky titled <PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU POST>.

Regards

 

MudCrab --

I am working on building the BartPE CD. I successfully got the Windows installation CD built and burned. Now I am on step #4 of building the BartPE CD, where I add any additional drivers that I need.

When I go to Control Panel, System, Hardware, DeviceManager, and then click on Disk Drives, I see my two internal hard drives and the External Acomdata HD (the one that the Acronis bootable CD does not see).
All three hard drives are showing the same identical driver files:
c:WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\disk.sys PartMgr.sys snapman.sys

Does this mean that I don't have to add any special drivers for the External HD, since its drivers are the same as the two internal HDs drivers?

Hectortc

 

It should. Try it and see if the drives are all present and accounted for.

sh

 

hectortc:

As schieber said, try it and see if it works. You may not have to add any drivers, especially if your computer isn't brand new. It's the newer systems that cause the problems because the the XP SP2 installation cd doesn't include the drivers.

You can use a CD-R/W disk if you want and that way you can reuse it if needed (if you find you need to add a driver, for example).

As far as getting drivers: I never tried to pull them out of the system by looking them up in the Device Manager. I knew what I needed (RAID, Network, JMicron) and downloaded the latest versions. I then added those to the BartPE cd.

 

I put the disk driver files (as specified in Device Manager) into pebuilder because I figured that if it didn't need them then it wouldn't hurt anything. I specified the ATIH 10 plug-ins, and then burned the BartPE bootable CD.

And it all worked!!! I am very happy. I can boot from that CD, I can start the Acronis application, and it is able to see the backup file on my External HD. Mission accomplished !!!

Thank you all (especially MudCrab) for your assistance. I now am confident that I could restore my C: drive in the event of a catastrophe where I had to replace the drive.

I do have one more question. Do I need to purchase the Acronis Disk Director Suite in order to be able to easily work with a new or corrupted hard drive (my C: drive)? In the event that the disk got seriously corrupted and I had to start over, I know I would have to format the drive prior to running the ATIH restore. If I don't buy the Acronis DDS, then how would I be able to run a format on the drive c:? I do have a floppy drive on this computer. Can I create a DOS-bootable floppy and put the format program on that, and keep the floppy ready in case I need to format the C: drive? Or should I just go ahead and spend $50 for the Acronis Disk Director Suite?

 

It's up to you if you want to purchase DDS. I have it and use it quite often.

You don't need to format or setup a new hard drive prior to restoring a TI image. TI takes care of all of that. You can even resize the partitions if necessary to take advantage of a larger disk, for example.

As for the assistance, you are very welcome.

 

I had exactly the same problem. I usually use two USB Mass storages:

External USB disc drive
USB Card reader for camera memory cards or sometimes USB memory stick.

When I disconnect either the USB card reader or the external disc drive,
the full mode works fine and the still connected USB Mass storage can be used for Back Up.

In other words: Full mode in my configuration works, when there is only one external USB Mass storage connected!

I found this by chance as I didn't remember the card reader being connected to my computer.

Would be happy to hear from you, if this solves your problem.

By the way: Bart PE CD with acronis works fine for me with two external USB drives.

 

Me too.

When I run TI10 4940 I get the blank screen as well. Safe mode is no problem at all. I've an Asus P4C800E deluxe. With all RAID's turned off and just a single PATA drive connected it does this.

acpi=off noapic did not help. I tried a rescue CD with just the 'full' version on it and that was no different either. I tried a BartPE disk but that BSOD'ed on a checksum failure of some dll.

TI9 3677 will run full mode, to a point. It will lock up somewhere but it progresses into the full program display before freezing.

I've always run safe mode but now have the need for usb stuff and this I discovered how much of a problem I was really having.

 

Hello jgivens,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please download and install the latest build (4942) of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home. To get access to updates you should first register your software. Don't forget to recreate Acronis Bootable Rescue Media after updating.

If the issue persists, please collect some information to let us investigate it thoroughly:

Please create Acronis Report and Linux system information (sysinfo.txt) as it is described in Acronis Help Post. Please keep the drives in question connected and powered on during the creation process.

Please also collect the exact vendor and device names of the drive in question.

If you're not able to create Linux system information (sysinfo.txt) then please do the following:

- Boot your computer from Acronis Bootable Rescue Media and press F11 key when the selection screen advising you to select either "Full", "Safe" or "Boot into Windows" option appears.
- After you get the "Linux kernel command line" prompt, remove the word "quiet", click on the OK button and choose "Full Version".

When the screen stops scrolling please write down the output information you receive (last 5-10 lines), or use a digital camera to make shots of the output screen. You can use Shift+PgUp and Shift+PgDn keys to scroll the screen manually.

Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to 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 a solution.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov