Cannot assign Drive Letter to any Image...?

Hi Kenneth,

Glad to see you got your files back with TI9.

I do not see any reason why it would be important to mount an image instead of using the new selective restore feature. I have always thought that Acronis should abandon image mounting and develop thier own image browser instead. Some other backup programs use that method. Image mounting in Windows is a difficult thing to get working on a wide variety of hardware. I too would appreciate any opinions as to why image mounting would be better.

These are interesting messages. It looks to me that the first message tells you that the image has been mounted and is waiting for a drive letter to be assigned. The second message seems to indicate that TI9 has timed out after failing to assign the drive letter and unmounted the image. How much time goes by between these messages? In BartPE there in about a one minute delay before TI gives up. I am very interested in knowing if you opened Disk Management during that time and what you saw. If you do this and see the new partition, you should be able to assing a drive letter as I described in my previous post. Since I can not duplicate the problem, I have not been able to try this method in any normal Windows system.

Hope to hear back from you with your results.

mustang

 

Hi again,

The messages appeared in sequence in an instant. In fact, I had to move those at the top of the stack to see what the others were telling me.

All the best,
Kenneth

 

To mustang:
image mounting is very useful to me: for example, I can compare the backups to original files. (I think TI's verification didn't do it)
I used to have some problem with TI and image mounting w/USB flash drive,and the problem disappered if I unplug the USB drive. But sometimes it works with it, so it maybe TI is not always compatible w/OS hardware combinations.

 

Hi Kenneth,

Thanks for your feedback. Surely you are not getting enough time to try the workaround method of assigning a drive letter. That is too bad.

Just for your information, I still can not duplicate your problem here. I did a clean install of Windows 2000 Pro and installed True Image 9 just for test purposes. I was able to plug and unplug images both from a local drive and over the network. At this point I could not say if TI is having a problem with your hardware or if you have a Windows problem. I guess you will just have to wait and see if support has any solutions.

Best of luck,
mustang

 

Hello again,

My saga continues...

At some point in my exchange of a dozen or so emails with support, I was asked to make a modification of two reg keys but was provided no instruction about how to create the changes. With the familiar regedit, I got nowhere, but then I discovered that with regedt32 things made a bit more sense.

I was asked to add a word to each of two keys, that would certainly seem simple enough but, I still do not know the proper way to add the information to the keys...

I do know that I need to open the key as a Multi string.

But after that, I need some help.

Suppose the first key data now looks like this:

snapman




I was asked to add "PartMgr" without the quotes.


Should the result then look like this:

snapmanPartMgr

or

snapman PartMgr

or

snapman
PartMgr



Or something else


Any help on this would be appreciated, and while we are at it:

I have been doing this exchange for about a week. It has taken hours of my time, and no doubt, significant time of the folks who are trying to help me. I cannot think of a medium less appropriate to this effort than email. Were we on the pnone, the problem would probably have been resolved in minutes.

All the best, and thanks for any help,

 

Hello Kenneth,

I'll give you instuctions using regedit.

Under the "UpperFilters" key in HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Class\{4D36E967----------------} you should see the following:

Type: REG_MULTI_SZ
Data: PartMgr snapman

If you see Type: REG_SZ , just delete the "UpperFilters" key on the right hand side. Then go to the menu and select Edit/New/Multi-String Value. Name the new key UpperFilters. Now select Edit/Modify. In the window type PartMgr in the first line. Then hit enter. Now type snapman in the second line. Now hit OK. Now you should see the key as I have shown it above.

Under the "UpperFilters" key in HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Class\{71A27CDD----------------} you should see the following:

Type: REG_MULTI_SZ
Data: VolSnap snapman timounter

Use the same method to get this done.


PartMgr and VolSnap are Windows services. Snapman and timounter are services that Acronis has installed. Please let us know what values you had on these lines before you started, and if these changes help.

mustang

Edited to remove the spaces between Upper and Filters.

 

Hi Mustang,

Please accept my thanks. With your kind help, I did get the registry modified, but I did not use the method you described...<g>

Here's why:

You suggested I use regedit and said (in part):

"Now select Edit/Modify. In the window type PartMgr in the first line. Then hit enter. Now type snapman in the second line."

But when I touch Enter, the editor does not go to the second line, instead, it enters the value.

(Hey, wait a minute, if the intent was that I use regedt32, and the suggestion of regedit was just a typo...)

In any case, I used regedt32 and have the keys entered properly.

I have not yet checked to see if that corrects the problem I have been having.

I will also add that earlier today, I was sent new versions of snapman.sys, and timntr.sys that the Support folks wanted me to try.

I installed them using the console after booting from the Windows CD.

Then, I tried to launch TI and I got an error telling me that certain files were missing. It asked me if I wanted to repair, and I did.

The repair told me that one of my files was newer than the repair would install. That made sense, and I kept the newer file.

The hitch was that the repair did that for only ONE file. I checked and only one of the two new files is now in place.

I will reboot, and try TI, if it works mounting an image, we will declare victory. If not, I will try the two new files again.

Thanks for all your help,

Kenneth

 

Hello again,

Well, more bad nerws...

I modified the Registry, then shut down the box. Because I knew that at that point I had one of the new .sys files, and one of the old .sys files, I decided to copy the two new ones again.

Then I booted... Uh, more accurately, I tried to boot, but I got a blue screen error (and sorry here for the lack of precision) telling me that the appropriate boot files could not be found.

I looked in the BIOS and it looked right.

I then attempted to boot from the last good config, and I am running again.

It would appear that the modifications I made to the registry prevent the system from booting.

All the best, and thanks for further thoughts,

Kenneth

 

Hello Kenneth,

Sorry for the confusion. The instructions I gave you work for regedit under Windows XP. Apparently, it is different under Windows 2000. In any event you figured out how to make the registry modifications.

Here is another interesting bit of information. I took a look at the clean install of the Win2K system I recently made with TI9 installed. I discovered there is a third service listed in the {4D36E967---------} key under "UpperFilters". It is DiskPerf. There are three services listed (PartMgr DiskPerf snapman). DiskPerf seems to be peculiar to Win2K. It does not exist in WinXP. You should add it.

After you get the "UpperFilters" lines correct, I would suggest you uninstall True Image 9. Now manually delete the following files:

C:\WINNT\system32\snapapi.dll
C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\snapman.sys
C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\timntr.sys
C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\tifsfilt.sys

Now reinstall True Image 9 and see what happens. Also take a look back in the registry at the "UpperFilters" lines to see if they have been modified.

 

Hi again,

But with the suggested modifications to the Reg, I cannot boot the system at all... (and this has happened before.)

Thanks,

Kenneth

 

Hello mustang,

In both instances, using regedit under Win XP, should that not read HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{........ ?

Although it may not help Kenneth, I note that for my Win XP Home SP2 setup, Class\{4D36E967.........} reads as follows:
(Name) UpperFilters (Type) REG_MULTI_SZ (Data) PartMgr snapman SiRemFil

Note the additional Data value "SiRemFil". I wonder why I have it but you don't ??

Regards

 

Hello Menorcaman,

You are correct here. I typed it out from memory and forgot to include the "Control".

The "SiRemFil" you see is most likely a service that one of your other programs has installed on that line. I can give you two examples from my system. Paragon Exact Image 7 has included "hotcore" on this line. This is thier service to allow backups of files that are in use. Image For Windows has included "phylock" on this line. They use it to lock a partition before backing it up.

Take a look under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\SiRemFil. You may see the name of the company or program that installed the service. As an example, look at HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\snapman. You should see "Acronis Snapshots Manager". Some programs do not list anything to identify themselves. In the case of the two examples I listed above, there is no identification.

You may also see that you have HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\SiRemFil\Enum. There may or may not be a line with a reference to the Enum section of the registry like "Root\LEGACY_SiRemFil\0000" or "SiRemFil\0000". If you see a reference like this, you can trace it to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_SiRemFil or HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SiRemFil respectively. You may or may not see some identification here as well.

You may also see a driver file (XXXXX.SYS) in these sections that you may recognize to help you identify the program.

Have some fun and look around the registry. You can learn alot about True Image here. I learned this and more by writing my own version of a BartPE plugin for True Image.

mustang


EDIT:
Do you have a Silicone Image SATA controller in your system?

 

Hello all,

I just received yet another in the long list of suggested modifications offered by the good folks in Support.

Here is what I just did:

I added PartMgr to 4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318

I then re-booted.

I launched TI and tried to Plug a drive. Instantly, the system re-booted.

I then added VolSnap to 71A27CDD-812A-11D0-BEC7-08002BE2092F and attempted to reboot.

I got a blue screen error: Inaccessible Boot Device.

I then booted into my last good configuration, and got the system running.



With that, I gave up.

This process is getting me nowhere, and it taking vastly more of my time than I am willing to invest.

A problem, of course, is that the medium of email is not appropriate to the situation at hand.

Were I on the phone with a competent Support person, I suspect that this matter would have been resolved long ago.

I will also mention that the modifications to the registry suggested by Acronis Support have caused me enormous grief because the support folks tell me nothing whatever about what the changes were intended to achieve. As a result, during the process of endlessly exchanging emails I found that I was having very serious problems with Drive Letter assignments. My system has two disks, each with two partitions. Yet, at its worst, I showed a total of 7 drive letters. I also spent hours trying to resolve that problem.

Then, a few minutes ago, Acronis support asked that I add PartMgr to a particular key. As I was typing it in, I thought "Hmmm I wonder if that might be an abbreviation for Partition Manager..." In any case, after modifying the key, my Drive letter assignment problem was eliminated.

All the best,

Kenneth

 

Hi Mustang,

Many thanks. Following your advice I found that SiRemFil had indeed been inserted as part of my Silicon Image SiI3112A Sata Controller setup. Mystery solved!!

Regards

 

Hey Kenneth, any chance you could share exactly what you did to resolve this? We're having the same issues here, and its quite frustrating...