Can TrueImage support Assigned drive letters

I'm sad to say that I have been trying to fix problems with TI for 2 1/2 months. I finally gave up on trying to get it to work on my systems and did a reformat of Drive "C" and installed a clean Windows Xp up to SP2. With nothing else installed I loaded TrueImage 7 ,Build 638, and it worked. I then created a new image of the clean system.

Then I started to load a few of my programs like Office 2003, Diskeeper, Easy Media Creator. Then I discovered that the drive letters were wrong for drives D, E, F, and G. Drive C & H were OK. I used windows Disk Management to re-assign drive letters so I could get all the drives back to what they should be,.(or what they have been for the last 2 years). I had to go back and remove all new programs I had installed because they went to the wrong disk. Once I got them reloaded I started TrueImage to create a new backup. That's when the same old TrueImage problem came right back. What it does is open and analyse the disks, then opens the main window where I can select "Create Image". It gets to the window where I have to enter the new file name. I now can tell immediately that it will not work because in the folders window the only item there is the "Desktop". If it is going to work it will have a list of Desktop, My Computer, etc. Then you can select what drive you want to use by clicking on My Computer which will open and list all the drives. The file name block is blank, but if I enter the drive letter of my image files it will list the folders on that drive. Once I enter any new name the software is locked up, as well as my system and while it takes several minutes for the TAsk Manager to shut it down, the reset of the system still will not function. It won't even shut down. I have to hit the big red swithch.

I rebooted the system and uninstalled TrueImage using the TI install disk. You can not uninstall it from the ADD/Remove function,... it won't work. AFter it said the uninstall was successful, I did a search in the Registry and I found 96 items for Acronis. I then did a seach of my drives and found another 20 listings there. I just can't believe Acronis can't find a way to really uninstall. With all the reinstalls I've had to do my registry looks like garbage. No matter what I did, it would not re-install and work again.

So I said to myself,.. I'll just run it from the boot disk, that should work because it has no knowledge of anything in windows,.... right?. Wrong,.. it would not boot from the Resuce disk. It tries to load and gets to the "Acronis" screen, then it goes to a black screen with what looks like a data dump,... and then "Starts the Loader" again. This just repeats over and over.

Is there problem that I have a system with 3 hard drives, a CD-RW drive, and a DVD+RW drive,... and that the first drive has 4 partitions such that I end up with drives C, D, E, F, G, H, I, & J. When I added that new DVD+RW drive, I had to add a new PCI IDE adapter that would support 4 more drives. My 2 IDE ports are full with the 3 hard drives and the CD-RW drive. This new installation also switched my drive letters as I indicated above. Can this be the problem that it killing TrueImage??

 

Hello bstansbury,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Could you please create a screen shots of your step-by-step actions which you took during the image creation process?

Please create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files 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 the solution.

Thank you.
--
Kirill Omelchenko

 

To: Acronis Support.

I'm sorry but I got so frustrated trying to fix this problem for the last 2 1/2 months that I just gave up on it. I don't have the time to work on it any more. I took the TrueImage disk in the back yard and my dog and I played catch with it. It is not a very good "Fresbie".

I can tell you that all the screen images are standard to to the screen where I am supposed to select the output destination and name the file. On that screen the main window only contains the word "Desktop" and nothing else.
Juat about every key you press ends up with the total system locked and even task Manager can not shut it down. You can't even restart the system. The only option is "Big REd Switch". Also, once it restarts, you can not delete the program using ADD/REmove. I have to start the TrueImage CD and use the "Uninstall" feature there to get ride of it. Even then it won't go away. The Acronis folders are still all over the place, and when I checked the "Registry" there were 40+ items found doing a search for "Acronis".

I will mention that I can no get the Acronis CD to boot and then create a new Image from within the raw boot. That worked with no problems. Also, you should know that I am working from a Clean Install of Windows XP + SP2 + all new updates. Only one other program is installed and that is Roxio Easy Media Creator 8, which I need to burn CD's.

I also have a second machine with Windows Xp and TrueImage 7 installed as well as Eacy Media Creator 8 and that system works fine. The only real difference in the two systems is this one has a total of 5 Disk Drives installed and I had to RE-assign drive letters to get my old sofware to the correct location. I think the problem may be that the Linux software team at Acronis have a hard time writing software that really understands everything that is going on inside of windows. One thing for sure, if trueImage has any kind of internal error, it is not programmed correctly to be shut down or controlled by windows software. The recovery from an error is non-exsistant.

Inside of Easy Media Creator there is a Backup software called "BackupMyPC" and I'm going to give that a try. It is more complex to create and backup a problem for a "Disaster REcovery" but at least it is written in code that Windows can understand.

 

Hello bstansbury,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please be aware that Acronis True Image 7.0 does not support the modern hardware and software and we do not develop updates for this version anymore. We recommend you to use Acronis True Image 9.0.

Please follow the instructions below in order to uninstall your version of Acronis True Image:

* Delete Acronis Secure Zone either through the wizard or manually
* Delete snapman from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} -> UpperFilters
* Delete snapman and timounter from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{71A27CDD-812A-11D0-BEC7-08002BE2092F} -> UpperFilters
* Run Device Manager and delete Acronis Image Archive Explorer
* Delete snapman, timounter and tifsfilter from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services
* Delete TrueImage from the following registry keys:
o HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Acronis\Autopart (can be absent)
o HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Acronis\CDRecord
o HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Acronis\Schedule2
o HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Acronis\SnapAPI
o HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Acronis\Snapman
o HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Acronis\VBus
* Delete \Windows\System32\autoprnt.exe if it exists
* Delete the following folders:
o \Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\CDRecord
o \Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\Drivers
* Download http://www.acronis.com/files/support/schedmgr.exe, open the command prompt and run the following command in the folder you saved the file to: schedmgr service uninstall
* Open Task Manager and stop the following processes: schedhlp.exe, TrueImageMonitor.exe
* Delete the \Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\Schedule2
* Delete the desktop icon and Start menu shortcuts
* Delete \Program Files\Common Files\Acronis folder
* Delete \Program Files\Acronis\TrueImage folder
* Delete \Program Files\Acronis folder
* Delete TrueImage Monitor from the following HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
* Delete the following keys in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT:
o .tib
o .tis
o tibfile
o tisfile
* Delete the following registry keys:
o HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\TrueImage
o HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Acronis (you may need to grant full control permission to yourself to delete this key)
o HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Acronis
* Reboot the computer.

Please install the latest build of Acronis True Image 9.0. We will try to resolve the problem with the software.

Please check each partition of your hard drives by Windows utility:

- For Windows XP please use Windows menu Start\Run, then enter the command
"chkdsk c: /r" "chkdsk d: /r" for every partition of your hard drives.

Please note that you will need to reboot your computer in order to scan the system partition.

If that does not help then please download the latest version of Acronis drivers, install it with disabled logging and see if the problem still persists.

If the problem still persists then enable logging by running the Acronis drivers installation package once again, reproduce the problem and collect the c:\snapapi.log file.

Please create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please make a screen shot of the Device Tree application:

- Download and unpack the Device Tree application;

- Run the application;

- Completely unfold the \Driver\Disk and \Driver\FtDisk branches;

- Move the margin to the left in order to see all the items;

- Make a screen shot;

Please make also the screen shot of the Backup Archive Location where you can select only Desktop.

Please create an account, then log in and 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 the solution.

Thank you.
--
Tatyana Tsyngaeva

 

Well I didn't believe that I would ever be back to this forum,... especially after my dog put his teeth marks on my TrueImage disk. Anyway, since there has been some very significant findings I felt that it may help some other poor sole having problems with TrueImage. I realize that Acronis would love me to spend "MORE DOLLARS" on the new Version of TrueImage, but after all the problems I've had with this version, and looking at the posts that show up on this forum on Version 9, there is no way I would spend the $$$$$ to do that.

Anyway, After following your instructions on how to remove all of TrueImage from my system, I was still having problems with windows starting. It would take a long time from boot to get to my desktop. I called Microsoft and worked with them for about one hour. They didn't have any specific answers but the steps they took me through gave me an idea. If you read the posts above you will see some of the hardware changes I had made. I basically uninstalled the new hardware PCI IDE adapter, and reinstalled only one DVD+RW/ROM drive as master on the secondary IDE port. Then I restarted windows and this fixed all problems with starting windows. This PCI card was also a RAID controller and somehow was polling for other devices at startup,... but never finding any and eventually "Timed OUt" and started Windows.

Today I decided to re-install TrueImage one more time just to see if any of that hardware was having an impact on TrueImage. It installed, and believe it or not, worked perfectly. I created a new Image of my "C" drive and moved it to my DVD+RW disk,... no problems. My only problem is I have a CD-RW device that I now can't install for fear it will cause problems. Therefore,... the problem had nothing to do with the "RE-assignment of Drive Letters".,... I was lead down the path to think of this because when I booted from my TrueImage disk, all drives but "C" and "H" were mislabelled. I can live without the CD-RW drive, but it would be nice to have both installed. I hope this information might help someone else.

 

Glad you finally got some satisfaction after this long convoluted journey.

Have you tried running your main drive off the new IDE card instead of an optical drive. Some of them apparently don't like optical drives.

I have a PC with a Promise Ultra card in it with the C drive connected to it (non-Raid). It works fine with TI.

Are there any options in software/driver for the card to perhaps run it in a simpler mode?

If it will work in Windows but not the TI CD version you can get around that by using BartPE and the TI plug-in since this is a Windows system with the WIndows drivers not linux.

Do you really need a CD-RW drive? As technology evolves the amount of old, still-workable, stuff increases in my cupboard. Unfortunate but the cold fact of keeping up with the technology.

 

Seekforever,.. Thanks for you additional help.

Yes I did try the new drive on the PCI IDE card and it did work, but that was way before I found out what the real problem was. For me it seems that TI ver 7-638 will not boot unless there is a "ROM" device seen in by the BIOS. I tried 4 other possible combinations and while they all work in Windows, it will only work in TI if the ROM device is on the secondary IDE buss and is device 0, (i.e., a master). What is masterious is that even if this is set up correct, If I had one more CD drive by adding the PCI IDE card, it all fails. Take it back out and it works.

One other problem is the Boot disk. I have several but none of them were made on this machine. Each time I have tried to make one, I get the usual CD "Can't write" problem. I have found several solutions for this problem on this forum and I'm going to try them today. I hope they work.

The next question I have is on some instructions I was given from the Acronis Support team. I was not able to get my boot disk to find my DVD drive and therefore I would not be able to verify the DVD+RW disk I made from within Windows & TrueImage. The suggestion was to use the F11 key as TrueImage boot started. This did not work on 2 of my 3 boot disk (I got these from my brother who lives in another state) but it did finally work on his old TrueImage Ver 637 boot disk which was a "Full" boot disk. I used the F11 key and then entered "quiet acpi=off noapic" at the Linux prompt. This worked and I was able to find not only my DVD disk and verify my last Image, it also showed my full network and my backup system.

My question is, "Do I have to got through the 'F11' modification each time Iwant to boot into TrueImage. Is the boot disk that is created unique to each machine that created it? Is the boot disk aware of the entire system configuration at the time of creating the boot disk, and therefore can fail if somehow the hardware in the system changes.

My PCI IDE card is a Ultra ATA IDE controller from Silicon Image. It has RAID support and is supposed to support any IDE device. It did work on the Windows system and I had to problem reading or writing to it. I did have problems getting Windows to load the device driver,.. as it would only install the "RAID" version,.. but even in that mode it still worked.

You mentioned that if it worked in Windows and not in TI I could get around that by using the BartPE and the TI Plug-in. What are these and where do I get them and what do they do?

Finally, to you last question. Do I really need a CD-RW/ROM. The answer is I could live without it if there is no other way. However, I burn a lot of music, and I burn Books on Tape to CD's to play in the car. I also copy all kinds of things to CD's such as software, backups of pictures by event, I burn special music CD's for my boat when I'm on the lake, for other friends, backup software like, TrueImage, Windows, plus every piece of software I but. I buy CD's 100 at a time and I'm on my 3 holder of 100. I do no like to "Wear Out" one drive, especially my DVD drive burning CD's. I also burn almost the same amount of DVD's. I make my own Digital Videos and burn them all to DVD, I copy just about every DVD movie I want to keep. Every now and then I loan a DVD to by kids, or to friends that live near me. I have a good friend that had both knees replace last month and she was pretty much in her living room chair for a couple of months. I loaned her all kinds of DVD movies to help her pass the time. She loved it. Anyway, I think that explains why I really want to get my CD-RW drive back.

I hope I can get some answers to these questions. Thanks again

 

Just to add some more good news, that I'm sure will help others. I followed the instructions to the letter on creating a "Full Boot disk" from inside of TI and it worked. It also booted in my system and showed me all the hard drives and DVD drives and other Computers attached. I was also able to insert my DVD Image disk an get it verified.

To simlify the process, here are the key steps;

1. In Windows "Right Click" on all CD-RW or DVD RW drives. Select properties and then the "Recording Tab". Inside deselect "Enable CD REcording on this drive". This will disable the Writing Wizard in Windows

2. Start any other Auto CD writing software such as "Drag to Disk", or Direct CD, or Nero Expresss, or all of them and make sure you "Disable" them.

3. Open up the tray of you CD-rw drive and make sure you have a "Blank" CD to use. Insert it into the tray but "DO NOT CLOSE IT".

4. Start up TrueImage and select "Create Bootable Media". On the next screen select the "Full" option. On the next screen make sure you chose the correct CD-RW drive. When TRueImage ask you to insert a Blank disk, just click on the "Proceed" button and let TrueImage close the tray itself.

This worked for me and hopefully it will work for you. Make sure you have Blank media. I used a Blank RW disk and it work and then I copied that to a blank CD. Lots of luck.
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