Can't Activate Startup Recovery Manager - Home 2009

Try as I might, I can't seem to activate the Startup Recovery Manager with ATI Home 2009.

I've read the manual, browsed this site, searched through the available pdf's here, tried several different approaches with external drive and I keep getting an error message (Please see attached jpg file.)

I'm probably doing something silly or overlooking something but I've reached a dead end. Assistance will be greatly appreciated.

ATI Home 2009 Build 9709
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (build 2600)
Sony Corporation VGN-SZ750N Laptop
2.10 gigahertz Intel Core2 Duo
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies LTD R0121S5 12/19/2007
FUJITSU MHY2250BH [Hard drive] (250.06 GB) -- drive 0 INTERNAL
WDC WD25 00BEVT-00ZCT0 USB Device [Hard drive] (250.06 GB) EXTERNAL
2048 Megabytes Installed Memory

c: (NTFS on drive 0) 250.06 GB 137.31 GB free INTERNAL
i: (NTFS on drive 2) 169.30 GB 88.70 GB free EXTERNAL

 

That feature is optional and not required and not recommended by many. Check the thread listed on the first line of my signature below.

Some do use the Secure zone only but Acronis does not recommend it being on an external drive. Check some posting by xpilot as he best utilizes the features of the Secure Zone.

 

Thanks for the help, GroverH, greatly appreciated.

 

Hello ewachs,

Thank you for your interesting in Acronis True Image

Acronis does not recommend creating the Acronis Secure Zone on a detachable drive. If you activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager and then for some reason disconnect the drive Acronis Secure Zone resides on, your computer may boot with a long delay or not boot at all. You will need to either reconnect the drive with the Acronis Secure Zone or fix the master boot record (MBR).

Create Acronis Secure Zone on internal drive and see if the issue persists.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

I can't seem to find any way to create a new thread, so I'll try posting here as a reply.
I’m having a problem with the recovery manager. It took 46GB of space from my hard drive C, but it doesn’t show up anywhere as a separate partition with a drive letter like I see on some on the newer computers that already have a built in recovery manager. The thing is, when I press F11 at startup, I get a small password window. Since I didn’t create a password, I just pressed enter. When I do this or type anything else in there, I get the Bios. Is this what I’m supposed to get and if so, what do I do next?
Thanks for any help.

 

Hello tropical36,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

Since Acronis Secure Zone is a hidden partition, it cannot be accessed by Windows Explorer.

Could you please clarify where Acronis Secure Zone is located?

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

It's on my Main Hard Drive "C", which had about 148GB of total space and now has a total of 102GB, so it's on their somewhere. I just don't know how to access it from the bios where it keeps sending me with the F11 key.
When I created this, I thought sure it was going to name and show this partition with a separate drive letter. I mean how would one other than myself even know it was there? I fixed two computers using the built in recovery manager that I would never had known about except it was shown and named as soon as I opened "My Computer".
I was hoping to call and get walked through this but can't find a tele number anywhere.

 

UPDATE....
I think we're OK with this now and here's what I did.
I first made sure the recovery manager was activated by viewing and using the "Protection State" window after opening the Acronis software. Here it also shows the "Secure Zone" that was created for this.
Next I restarted my computer but instead of just hitting the F11 key at random, I waited for this prompt that shows up at the bottom of the screen for a second or two and then pressed it. Here's where you need to be paying attention and be quick.
After that things worked as they should and I continued with the boot into windows. This recovery assuming that's the way it works, is still a little different than what I expected, as it just boots into windows, whereas the factory computers with this feature built in, rewrites everything and takes about an hour or two, supposedly not erasing any of your programs and files, but don't always trust this. I did one vista machine that saved most everything in a backup file and that worked pretty well and then an xp machine that mostly kept everything except the documents folder, and even then some programs needed a reinstall.
Anyway and having said all this, it very well could be that Acronis True Image might have the best idea for this, except it does take up a lot of hard drive space.

 

Hello tropical36,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

If you don't place any archives to Acronis Secure Zone, Acronis Secure Zone can be about 100 MB of size to store the files that are necessary to activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager.

Thank you.

--

Oleg Lee

 

So how do I do that now....step by step, as it took 46GB of space to do this by following the prompts that were laid out for me and why did it insist on using all that space if 100 MB was sufficient? So far I'm not installing in my laptop as it doesn't have a huge hard drive.

 

Hello all,

Chapter 9.2 Resizing Acronis Secure Zone in User Guide for Acronis True Image Home 2009.

--
Oleg Lee

 

OK, that was easy enough, so I decided to do it with my laptop, and make it only 100MB to begin with. Problem is, I don't see the F11 prompt on this machine and F11 doesn't do anything at startup either, so whats going on with this?

 

Did you activate the ASRM?

 

Thanks for the reminder. I can't believe I missed that after going through the exact same procedure with the other computer.