OS Selector not recognising drive

I have a Vista partition followed by an XP partition on my HDD. OSS only recognises the XP partition.

Have tried the wizard to add OSes manually but it says that it doesn't find any on the Vista partition.

Any help appreciated.

 

Is there to be no help from Acronis support? All I want to do is use a feature that I paid for and was one of the reasons I chose this product over partitioning software that did not come with boot managers.

As well as not showing Vista it also doesn't show an option to boot into a bootable CD when one is in the drive, but I can live with that. At present if I want to boot into the OS that is not currently active I have to wait for the other one to load then use ADDS to make the other one active then reboot. A hassle.

 

OSS has a problem finding non-Microsoft or brand-name OEM Vista installations. They have to be added manually.

Can you attach a copy of the BOOTWIZ.OSS file (instructions can be found here)?

Also, let me know which partition is the Vista partition.

OSS can't see some CD/DVD drives. As far as I know, it depends on the chipset used in the computer. It has the same problem on my P965/JMicron chipset board. I don't mind because I wouldn't install or boot CD/DVD's through OSS anyway.

 

Thank you for the reply.

Earlier today I reinstalled OSS but this time chose custom install and installed to the first logical drive. This time no OSs where found at all. It also wouldn't let me deactivate since there was no OS it could set as active for the next reboot, so I had to use the boot CD to uninstall. Bizarre.

Anyway, I shall try installing with the default install setting again, and see if it allows me into any OS so that I can see the required Bootwiz file and copy it.

 

If OSS installs, but doesn't find anything and you're going to have to get access to the files (like BOOTWIZ.OSS), just boot to a Windows CD and do an MBR repair. This will deactivate OSS and leave the files intact. If you uninstall OSS, the files will be lost.

Since it's only finding XP, I would recommend that when you install OSS that the XP partition is set as the Active partition and that XP is booting normally before you install OSS.

 

Hello Chrinoc and MudCrab,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

In this situation it's recommended to fix Master Boot Record of your hard drive, it will make your XP system bootable.

Please boot up from the Windows Bootable CD, then go to the Recovery Console (the
first Repair option you come to).

From the command prompt please type:

FIXMBR C:
FIXBOOT C:
BOOTCFG /rebuild

After that, please reboot your computer.

If you prefer to fix MBR using a CD, then please download special Acronis utility. Use it to create a CD and boot the machine from the CD.

The MBR will be rewritten once you boot the computer from the created media and confirm that you want to fix the MBR.

Please do not use the instructions above for Vista systems.

Thank you.
--
Alexander Nikolsky

 

May we have a similar instruction that does work for Vista, please ?

 

The basic procedure:

1. Boot to a standard Vista DVD.
2. Select the Repair Mode.
3. Cancel any automatic repair.
4. Start the Command Prompt.
5. Enter the following commands at the prompt (<ENTER> means to press the ENTER key):
   Code:

   bootrec /fixmbr <ENTER>
   bootrec /fixboot <ENTER>

6. Close the Command Prompt window and reboot the computer.

More information on using bootrec can be found here.

 

Thanks, Mudcrab, however the point I was hoping to make was that surely Acronis know enough about this problem and the fact that many of us do not have a Vista DVD from which to boot, that they ought to give us the means to download something which we can then use to burn our own bootable disk in order to get our machines back up and running. As far as I can see, all solutions require one to be in possession of a Windows Vista DVD.

 

You can download the Acronis MBR Fix tool. I think the "don't use with Vista" comment was for the XP RC commands. Personally, I don't like the Acronis MBR (unless they've updated it recently -- I haven't checked).

If you have TI, you can also just restore the MBR from any previous backup image of the drive. This doesn't require a Windows CD/DVD and you'll get back the original MBR.

 

I got the MBR fixed yesterday when my friend finally remembered to get be a Vista Disk, and now I can start my laptop once again.

So ... I've made my recovery disks, created a bootable CD using DD (which won't boot, it gives an error and then Vista starts of the hard drive).

Anyway, I decided to uninstall OSS, but it tells me that there is no Operating system to boot into after the uninstall, so I'm a bit reluctant to proceed without knowing what is likely to happen (my friend wasn't able to leave his disk with me as he'd borrowed it from work). Not sure what to do for the best ...

 

Strangeman:

You can make your own Vista repair CD. Here's an article with instructions.

 

If you have TI or another program capable of making a backup of the MBR, create one before you do anything else. You can even use DD to make a backup of Sector 0, if you want. Just understand that restoring it will also restore your partitioning setup. This is not a problem if you didn't make any changes. You can also just save the MBR code portion of the sector.

To uninstall OSS when it can't find any OS on the computer, you have to do it from the DD/OSS CD. If your DD CD doesn't include the OSS programs, create a new CD using Media Builder and include them. Then boot the CD, select the OSS Setup option and uninstall OSS. It should put the original MBR back (I think it saves it). It's really stupid that OSS won't uninstall and set the system back to its original state regardless of what it "thinks" is on the drive when you try to do the uninstall from Windows or from in OSS.

 

Thanks for the replies - I will follow up that link, but for now I managed to find out that hitting the f8 key a lot got me to the 'proper' vista repair bit where I could repair stuff, and I'm almost back in control again now.

Still haven't managed to get that DD CD to boot though ...

 

thank you very much for your assitance.
hermann

 

heimo,

Would it be possible for you to post a screenshot of DD (in Manual Mode) showing the partition graphics for your drives?

Can you confirm that the 50GB "Y:" partition is a Logical partition? If it is, note that, in some cases, OSS has problems booting Vista from a Logical partition.

Is OSS currently deactivated or did you uninstall it? I need to know the state of the OSS files.

What build of DD/OSS are you using?

What version of TI did you use to restore the image to the Y: partition?

 

hallo,

It looks that your upload does not work correct,

Now I see, that only one Attachment is visible.
So I try the second again here.
Did you receive with my first post any Attachment?
so the bootwiz.txt file?

yours
hermann

 

again try attachment.

 

sorry attachment upload does not work,
please advise me how.

hermann

 

You might make sure the filesize of the image isn't too large to attach. It should just be a standard JPG file. If that still doesn't work, just type it out like this:

Code:

[C: Vista, NTFS 60GB Primary][D: Data, NTFS 20GB Primary].....[Y: Vista Logical, NTFS 50GB Logical]

The version of TI only matters if it was TI 10 or earlier. TI 11 and later will make changes to Vista's BCD file to allow Vista to boot.

Since OSS is deactivated, I will add the C: Vista entry to the file. I will wait to add the Y: (Logical) entry until we know if the C: version boots okay. Keep a copy of the original BOOTWIZ.OSS file and then use the attached version in its place (make sure to rename it to BOOTWIZ.OSS). Then, reactivate OSS and see if you can boot into your C: Vista.

 

new trial for uploading,

looks good, at the moment,

first time the upload windows shows the files
I hope you now can read it.

yours

hermann

 

ahllo,

I see, now upload works,
maybe your server was overloaded.

therefor, additional a copy of OSS screen:

yours.

hermann

 

Is the OSS screenshot one created after using the BOOTWIZ.OSS file I attached in Post #21?

 

Hallo,

no it ist he OSS after installation of OSS and searching for VISTA OS.

Before reactivating and trying your new BOOTWIS.oss please advise, what to do and how to deactivate OSS, if your file does not work.

It is very critical for me again to copy the bootsector over by hand.

please mail me today the second bootwiz file with bootentry for drive Y, so I can try both files on weekend.
THis is best time for me for testing it.

thanks a lot.
yours
hermann


yours