TI 8.0 - XP: If Main Active Partit is NOT C - restored image won't run

I decided to put Acronis True Image 8.0 through it's paces today and see if it would backup and restore as advertised. After registering, and downloading the latest build, the backup worked seemingly AOK. However, my main active partition on the testing PC is not C:, rather it is F:. When I reboot the PC after restoring from a backup; the PC makes it to the 2nd Windows XP screen - Welcome to WIndows and hangs there. I assume it's a confusion of the F: and not C: Main drive. Any ideas or suggestions??

 

If it got to the Win XP welcome screen then obviously the boot up found the active partition with Win XP on it. The fact that it hangs up sort of hints at a problem with backup image. I have had a similar problem all week. Did you run a verification on the image?

 

Actually I tried restoring three times onto two different hard drives, the 1st time I DID run the verification, to save time I omitted it on the last two. Maybe I'll create another image with NO compression (who knows) and try what you suggest - a restore with verification. I'm rooting for this to work. Thanks.

 

Well, Here we are 90 minutes later and here's the facts:
PC is an Athlon 64 3000XP with Windows XP Media Ctr Edit - fully updated
Single IDE Hard Drive has 3 primary partitions:
F: = Active. Bootable Main Partition with XP Progs etc. etc. Updated & Clean.
G: = A misc Primary Partition
H: A Backup Partition

C: is actually a memory card reader
I: is a USB 2.0 External hard drive

Objective was to True Image Backup the F: Hard Drive (Partition) over to a folder on the USB 2.0 Hard Drive, and, Restore it back onto a new, empty hard drive. Been doing this successfully with Drive Image 7 and Ghost 9 for some time (at least with C: drives), successfully.

When The True Image Boot (Recovery) CD (WHich I created AFTER UPDATING to latest TI 8 build) restores the Image to the hard drive, all looks well - (yes I instructed TI to VERIFY the image). I restart PC and Xp makes it to it's 2nd screen (about 20-30 seconds of XP startup activity) and hangs, the mouse cursor moves normally BUT - NO ICONS, NO STart Button. Safe mode - SAME THING, no go. I am truly at a loss as to what to try next. Im sure it's got to do with the XP Drive being F: instead of C:

 

Thanks John

Appreciate your taking the time to offer suggestions.

1) NO I didn't check the image separately - I did it as an added step in the restore.

2) I read about the ability to assign a drive letter - I believe it was in the help or online users guide. My version of True Image DID not prompt me for a letter, it did prompt for Primary, Logical or Active (Neither Active, nor, primary worked.

3) Your suggestion about the MBR coming back with an image of the full drive is a good one. I assume that will work EVEN if I image all 3 of my partitions, rather than a drive that consists on 1 drive-filling partition, if you know what I mean. I may try it out of Intellectual curiosity, but my application here is to set up customers' PCs with two Automatic middle-of-the night unattended backups (each with three or four revs before overwriting oldest): One onto a large backup partition on their primary hard drive, and The Second onto either a 2nd internal drive or an external USB drive. That way two drives have to fail almost simultaneously to be catastrophic. Ghost 10 lets me do ONE but not BOTH of these backups automatically. I was hoping True Image would be the answer. I'll have to try it on an "Active C:" rather than an "Active F:" PC - which is a far more mainstream config than mine (which actually resulted from a screwup I was too lazy to bother going back and fixing - keeps it interesting too, eh).

 

Hello Geedubya,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please create the bootable rescue media with the latest build, boot your computer from it and try to restore an image.

If that does not help, please try the following workaround:

Please boot your computer from the Acronis True Image rescue disc (the full version) and press F11 key when the "Starting Acronis Loader..." message appears. After you get the "Linux Kernel Settings" prompt, please add the "acpi=off noapic" parameter (without quotes) to the end of the Linux kernel command line (do not remove the word "quiet") and click on the OK button.

If the problem still persists, please download Acronis True Image 9.0 trial version.

Please create the bootable rescue media with the trial version and try to restore your image in rescue mode once again.

If the problem still persists, we would recommend you to try the acpi=off noapic workaround as it as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

If that does not help, please create Acronis Report and Linux system information (sysinfo.txt) as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

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.

Please be aware that if you restore from Acronis bootable rescue CD (it contains a Linux kernel), Acronis Bootable Rescue Media (full version) can display drive letters different from those you see in Windows because Linux has its own rules of drive naming. This is absolutely normal and there is no need to worry about the difference in drive letters assignment.

For more information, please refer to the Malta Linux Users Group article here:
(http://linux.org.mt/article/partnames).

Please note also that you are able to assign a drive letter to the restored logical partitions only within Windows. When you restore the system partition, Acronis True Image automatically reboots your computer into rescue mode so you are not able to assign a drive letter to the system partition.

Thank you.
--
Tatyana Tsyngaeva

 

Thank you Acronis Tech Support.

You wrote:
----------------------------------
Please create the bootable rescue media with the latest build, boot your computer from it and try to restore an image.

If that does not help, please try the following workaround:

Please boot your computer from the Acronis True Image rescue disc (the full version) and press F11 key when the "Starting Acronis Loader..." message appears. After you get the "Linux Kernel Settings" prompt, please add the "acpi=off noapic" parameter (without quotes) to the end of the Linux kernel command line (do not remove the word "quiet") and click on the OK button.
-----------------------------

I write back:

I did BOTH of the above. Results identical to all my prior tests - Restored hard drive would hang about 30 seconds into XP startup, Mouse can be moved, no desktop icons, no start button...

I am going to change strategy here and test the product in a more conventional XP environment where I am merely backing up and restoring a garden-variety typical Primary C:-drive installation. If this works and works well I have a practical, cost-effective solution for my customers - which is really what I wanted all along. Wish me luck!

Incidently, a set of TWO tried-and-true Powerquest Drive Image 2002 boot diskettes (Rescue diskettes) saved me over and over and over again during all these unsuccessful trials with True Image enabling me to recreate working hard drives/partitions.

I'd suggest that your company fund a small project to test True Image's capabilities in a Windows XP environment similar to my own and either fix True Image so it works, or, Disclaim it. There's an awful lot of Windows XP PCs out there that NEED this capability. As a businessman, however, I cannot afford to spend $1,000 of consulting dollars trying this and trying that to make a $50 program do what the box claims it's supposed to do, especially when the final result is still failure. I hope you get it right!

 

Hello Geedubya,

We are really sorry for our previous reply. We believe some misunderstanding took place.

As far as I can understand, you have created and afterwards restored (to a replacement hard drive) an image of a single system partition rather than the image of the entire hard drive. If that's the case then please take a look at the following threads describing the issue: auto logoff problem, Re: Mr.

If my assumption is not correct then please provide us with the more detailed information on the problem:

- Did you try to boot into the restored operating system on the same computer or on another machine with a different hardware configuration?

- Let us know if the partition configuration has changed (the number of partitions or\and the drive letters assigned to these partitions);

- Describe actions taken before the problem appears step-by-step.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

Hi

This is just a "test" reply - I'd just written a rather lengthy one and it didn't post - again, just a test. If test works, I'll try again later, have got to get off to work...

Geedubya
====================

 

Alexy

Well, I actually have some excellent news. I installed TI 8.0 (latest build) onto my Office PC which is XP Pro with 2 hard drive:
Drive 1 Main C: Primary Partition (XP, Progs mydocs etc etc.)
Drive 1 Extended Partition with 2 logical drives DMisc) and YBackups)
---
Drive 2 Same config as Drive One except only the Backup Logical Drive (Zis "unhidden". Other two partits do NOT display in My Computer.

I backed up C: onto both Y: and Z: No problems. I RESTORED the backup image from the Z: partition onto a brand new EMPTY hard drive from the True Image Recovery CD I'd created - and, IT WORKED. The PC started up normally with only a single C: Partition on a single drive. As I suspected, this suggests that my aforementioned problem is NOT because I didn't backup an ENTIRE Drive with all it's partitions and restore it as an entire drive. I think I'd mentioned in an earlier post that I've used Powerquest Drive Image 2002 Boot diskettes to Disk-to-disk copy an individual main C: partition (from a drive with multiple partitions) onto an empty drive with only the one resulting partition after the copy - and it always booted up Windows XP just fine for me. So I'm not surprised that it also worked with True Image. IE My Windows installation is not hanging because it is looking for partitions that used to be there but are not there after a restore, it works just fine.

I might add, that I re-created two more Primary partitions (D: and Y on the NEW RESTORED hard drive and re-ran True Image again to backup the C: partition. I haven't restored that backup image yet, but I'm confident it will work and I will have my backup methodology for my Customers.

As to my original issue (F: being my main primary Active boot partition and not C I'm going to try a couple of other backup programs (Ghost 9 and ugh Ghost 10). If you're interested, I'll let you know what happens... let me know.

Thanks for your suggestions.
GWH
www.idskeene.com

 

Geedubya,

A member in the Radified forum had success with Method #1, as his OS was not on the C: drive.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm

 

Method #1:
One way to correct an erroneous drive letter is to directly edit the [MountedDevices] registry key. Microsoft provides instructions how to do this, but that only works if we can still boot into Windows. If Windows won't boot, we need a method that works from outside Windows. In that case, use Savepart, a freeware program. This utility's main function is imaging and restoring partitions (like Ghost, DriveImage, et al), but one of its extra features is the ability to deliberately specify drive letters in the 2000/XP registry. Start Savepart, point to the clone's partition, and tell it what drive letter we want that partition to be assigned when it boots. The other two methods may be easier, but only when the original partition was designated C:. If the original partition was not designated C:, then Savepart should be able to set the correct drive letter.

==========================

Thank you so much, Brian. This looks very promising. Furthermore, I think I actually understand it. It'll probably have to wait until the weekend before I have time to actually give this a whirl, if it works I'll discard my Topview and CP/m systems forever (Old timers joke).

Thanks, again

GWH
www.idskeene.com

 

Here is the Radified thread.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1140647361

 

Hi Brian,

An interesting link containing an excellent explanation from the Great Man himself (Dan Goodell). Dan's <multi-boot section of his web site (particularly the bit on "Fixing Windows 2000/XP Drive Letters")> and that explanation should be made compulsery reading for anyone having problems with disk cloning!!

Regards

 

Hi all

Seems I'm NOT alone in this, whew! Was ready to move to the newly discovered Planet (beyond Pluto, I forget it's name).

Kudos and THANKS to Brian K, Ghost4me.John, Menorcaman and, in particular, Dan Goddell. (Anyone I've omitted, my apologies; completely unintentional).

Acronis should put ALL your photos on the box and pay you royalties for true image sales.

I'm actually hoping for a major blizzard so I can take some time off, try some of these revelations and get up to speed on this.

By the way, it's been awhile since I built this (G-Sys) system, but if my memory serves me correctly, when I first booted the Windows XP CD to install it (xp), one of the following scenarios is what caused the main-active-system drive to be lettered G: and not C:

1) I created multiple primary partitions at the start, rather than going back and adding them AFTER XP is installed - as I routinely do now.
2) The floppy disk drive I'd installed (screwed and cabled) into the PC had two "memory drives" built into it, one of whom even NOW is lettered C:, or,
3) There may have been a slave drive attached at the time, but I really doubt this.
4) I was NOT trying to create a dual/multi boot PC (Although I've built a couple of those for customers still running DOS accounting programs).

If I'd have known at the time I was throwing this thing together that I was going to encounter all these difficulties backing it up because XP ended up on G:, I'd have reinstalled it on the spot. Secondly, I'd have paid more attention to EXACTLY what I did, rather than trying to remember it accurately now.

But then, look at what I never would have had the opportunity to have learned! Thanx again guys!!!

GW
www.idskeene.com

 

Geedubya,

For what it's worth, I only restore an image of the OS partition (not the whole HD) when I upgrade to a larger HD. Acronis TI, Ghost 9/10. It works. I partition the new HD before the restore process and I prefer restoring an image rather than cloning the partition, but both ways work. I've already created partitions for my data drives and I simply copy the data via My Computer. I don't image data drives.

 

Brian K - This one's for you.

Your Post initially pointed me in the right direction to ultimately achieve success in backing up and subsequently restoring this ornery PC.

Using ATI8 Build 937, I today succeeded in backing up my Windows XP Media Center Edition PC's main active F: partition to an external USB 2.0 hard drive. I next validity-checked the image, and using the bootable ATI8 recovery CD, restored the image to a pristine 160Gig hard drive.

I booted the PC from a Win98 boot diskette, executed SAVEPART version 3.10 to identify the F: partition in the Windows registry, rebooted, and, VIOLA - the PC booted fully all the way into Windows just as sweet as could be. Thank you, mate.

This is a hasty post - but I'm quite sure SAVEPART's the key, and I'm reasonably confident there's no further glitches - hope so!