Help with Recovery!

Hello,

I recently downloaded your trial version of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home software. I made multiple backups of my hard drive thereof to my external hard drive and am now in a situation where I may have to reformat my hard drive due to a virus.

How do I go about loading the backup that acronis made, from my hard drive to a reformatted laptop?


For some reason I cannot download the user guide so I need guidence on this.

Again I am confused of this process as I will no longer have the Acronis software on my computer after I reformat

I did create a bootable startup CD using Acronis but it is not working to resolve my current situation where I am getting the "blue screen of death" with error Kernal_stack_inpage_error

I have a toshiba laptop w/MS Windows XP Home

 

The way to restore would be by booting from the Rescue CD.
Are you saying that you cannot boot from the CD? If that’s the case, exactly what are you experiencing?

 

I found out that my hard drive needs replacing.

So now that my hard drive needs replacing how do I go about getting the Acronis backups from my external hard drive to laptop?

As I mentioned before I tried using the recovery disk on the damaged hard drive before I knew it was damaged and nothing happened. The CD never started up at all.

I have another laptop so I tried loading the CD on it to see if something will start and it didn't however when I look at the CD files I see an installshield.exe and other very large zip files saved to it.

So the question remains if the bootable CD somehow does not run what are my other alternative for getting the backup make by Acronis loaded onto my laptop? Thank.

 

Sounds like you didn't make the bootable Rescue CD correctly. Get another computer and make the CD again, make sure it works, then put it in yours to check that it also works.

Next put a replacement laptop drive in yours, boot with the Rescue CD and hopefully you will be able to restore the image that is on the external drive.

 

I imagine the worse case would be you get the new drive, reinstall the OS, re-download and install TI and then write over everything with the backup image.

 

Hello suzz,

If I understand correctly, your system disk is in working order, but infected. Therefore you need to restore the clean image stored on an external HD, but your Rescue CD is not working. If able to restore, you do not need reformatting the main drive.

You may try to launch Restore from inside Windows (if still working). After you have made all the needed selections, you will come to a warning stating that the restoration could not be performed due to programs running and that you should either terminate all running programs (which you can't), or reboot. Choose Reboot and you will find yourself in the same rescue environment as by booting from Rescue CD. Now select Restore again and repeat the procedure down to Proceed.

Hope it works.

 

Hi again suzz,

I went through this thread one more time. If the BSOD you are getting is permanent and booting into Windows Safe mode is unfeasible too, you are probably left with the unfrendly option proposed by TheWeaz.

It's no use trying to produce a working Rescue CD from your other computer either, since, if I remember well, a Rescue CD generated by a trial version TI is stripped down and does not restore.

So even reinstalling Windows and installing trial TI again, you will still need to follow the path I outlined in my previous post. I only hope that the rescue version stored on the HD is fully operational in trial mode too, but I'm not sure.

 

I think you have it backwards, the Rescue CD will restore it won't create.

 

Lucky suzz!

A new, working Rescue CD should resolve the problem, then.

 

Hi again suzz,

To create the Recovery CD you should use the Create Bootable Rescue Media tool, accessible from the main TI screen in Windows.

The regular Rescue CD contains a folder named Recovery Manager with 7 files for a total of 12 MB in it. There are no installshield.exe or .zip files.

 

I love all of you guys...your'er so much help but here is the deal...

To Preface
MS full support and a Toshiba (my laptop manufacturer) recommended computer technision said that they are 90% certain that the "blue screen of death" that I have been getting on booting, is related to the hard drive, and that I should get a new one.

Nevertheless I would like to test that 10% of a chance of it not being a hard drive issue. So this is what I have decided

1. Reformat and then use TI to find my external hard drive backup
2. Use TI recovery CD now to backup

If the options above work then I don't think that I had a hard drive issue at all.

END PREFACE (Below is where TI comes into play)

I found my TI recovery CD copy. The one I mentioned above was my mistake.

Anyway the bootable disk starts up fine but when it asks me to select an archive from where I would like to take the backup from I do not see my external hard drive in the selections! The only drive I see are my A:, C:, D:CD/DVD and something else that says 'other computers' but my external hard drive which I created as Y: is not on the list to select.

Is this because my OS isn't running?

My hard drive is attached to my router maybe I should attach it to my laptop to see if it will see it, but if the OS can't start I don't think it will see it.

What should I do now in order to get to the backup on my external hard drive ?

Would I have to reformat, reinstall TI, re-map my hard drive to get the backup off of my hard drive after all I hope not, "I was trying to avoid reformating, but if I have, I guess I'll have to...

 

The "other computers" is probably something like "other computers near me" and means the ones on your network. If your drive is hanging off a router it might be there.

If you can't find it there, then the best thing to do is to attach it to your PC. Might be the best thing anyway.

The recovery CD has a Linux OS which it loads and runs so if it should be able to see and read your external drive. However, there sometimes are compatibility issues.

Note that when you run from the recovery CD linux assigns drive letters differently than Windows does. So don't be surprised if your drive letters are not what you expect. Also, be sure you scroll all the way down on the "drive window" to make sure your external drive isn't at the bottom of the list.

 

Seekforever I check the "other computers" and it wasn't there so I'll try your other suggestion which is to connect the hard drive directly "I love Linix"

If this does not work I think that I am going to try to re-install my XP home OS. I will choose the repair option as I think I read somewhere that this option will not erase software applications already installed.

Let me know if anybody thinks that this might be a bad idea

 

suzz,

In terms of the ability to restore the image of your system disk, you won't be any better if you install Windows. Namely, to perform a restoration of the system disk, you have to do it from the rescue (Linux) environment. Even if you start the restoration from Windows, you get redirected to the rescue environment, as I mentioned before.

So the core of your problem now is to make the USB disk accessible to TI running in Linux. Besides to what seekforever advised, disconnect any unneeded USB device and power up and connect the USB drive (directly) before starting booting from Rescue CD. When you come to the selection screen, move the mouse pointer over the topmost Full Version option, but wait for a couple of minutes before clicking on it. After you have clicked the Full Version, the "Acronis loading, please wait ..." message will show in the upper left corner. If no error message comes up immediately beneath that line, your USB drive has most probably been accepted. You must find it somewhere, possibly under the drive-letter B:

 

Bvolk,

Now I am in a predicament , you see I have tons of USB cables but none of them will work. The ones I have won't work because they all have one end that is (pardon my descriptions) like a flat rectangle while the other end is sought of like a small square. My laptop and my external hard drive slots only accepts the shape of the flat rectangle. I guess I have to go best buy hunting to see if I can get USB cables where both ends have the flat triangle shape. Wish me luck

 

Thanks gentlemen!

All is good again. I was able to find my drive and retrieve my backup safely.

Thanks a lot for you help. I appreciate it.

-Susan