Try & Decide Manager

Hello,

I just installed the Acronis True Image 2009 on my pc. I haven't had a chance to go through everything yet but I noticed something called Try and Decide. Can I simply start the Try and Decide to try out a piece of software or must I start at the beginning with True Image and make a backup first?

Thanks!

 

Do a search for threads Try and decide here as well.
Its a bit buggy.
AFAIK it will work under the following limitions.

1) Can only discard not apply changes ( most important bug )
2) Need Secure Zone with X amount of free space
3) Will not work with a certain motherboard.

Hope Acronis Support will give an offical answer to what the limitations are.

 

Hello lnjr,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis True Image

Performing potentially dangerous changes in the system, such as installing new software from the internet is sometimes a risky operation as long as it may lead to system instability or even worse: add Viruses or spyware to a computer. Thanks to Try&Decide users can now safely perform these potentially risky operations. When Try&Decide is turned on, all the changes performed will be transparently recorded in a hidden area of the selected partitions. At any time user can decide if he/she wants to apply the changes to the actual operating system or discard them and therefore revert the system back to its original state before activating Try&Decide.

Try&Decide feature in Acronis True Image Home 2009 provides more functionality than in the previous product version. The main difference is that now the feature allows continuing the session after system reboot. This enables users to use Try Mode even with the software that requires reboot after the installation. The feature is quite useful as the system needs to be restarted so that most of the modern programs could be used after installation. The program also supports saving the changes on any partition available in the system, including the one being protected. This means that there is no need to create Acronis Secure Zone to use the Try&Decide feature any longer.

How it works

Try&Decide functionality is provided by a special Acronis driver tdrpman.sys (Try&Decide Restore Points Manager) that is installed as an upper filter file system driver and the snapman.sys driver.

After user activates Try mode, the tdrpman.sys driver detects all the system requests to the protected partitions and forwards them to a temporarily created storage area on the hard drive. If the changes are set to be saved on the partition being protected, they are stored in free sectors of the partition's file system. If the changes are saved to the non-protected partition, the dedicated hidden folder named Try and Decide is created in the root of the target partition and the changes are saved there.

If the detected request to the partition's file system is a write request (the system intends to write a data block to the actual hard drive), the data block is forced to be written to the temporary storage area. Should the system try to read something from the protected partitions, the driver will check if the data block with the same ID is already present in the archive. If it is present, the driver forces the system to read the data from this archive instead of reading it from the physical drive. If the data block is not found in the temporary storage area, the driver allows the system to read the block from the physical drive.

Should user decide to apply the changes to the physical drive, he/she can press the Decide button and all the backup archive contents will be transferred to the physical drive.

If user discards changes, tdrpman.sys becomes deactivated and the system reboot is initiated automatically. The data in the temporary storage area is removed upon the operating system startup.

If the reboot is performed without taking a decision (e.g. the installed software requires the system reboot), the program modifies the MBR boot code. If there are several hard drives installed in the system, the MBR on the system hard drive will be modified.

After the boot code is executed during the next system startup, Acronis interrupt handler is activated for forwarding the system requests to the previously saved data. This allows the program to force the system load to continue further operations without actually applying them.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

You sure of this ? When I last tried to use Try&Decide I'm sure it asked me to create a secure zone.
I'm using ATI Home 2009 , version 9709.

Also what about the bugs that I mentioned ?

 

I have Tried and Decided not to use Try and Decide.

Try and Decide is just a bloatware feature. Acronis need to get the basics of backup and restore first before anything else.

It is better to do a full backup of the system then do experimental stuff.
If the experimental testing needs reversing just do a restore.

Before using Try and Decide Acronis manual says do a backup. So with this advice Try and Decide is a waste of time.

There are also still bugs in Try and Decide.

 

Hello all,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis True Image

The issue concerning Try & Decide loop after reboot is under investigation and will be fixed in future version of the program. You can receive Acronis' releases and special promotions information if you sign up at our web site.

The known issue is related to improper interaction of Acronis Drive Handler with Intel DP35 motherboard.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

Is the Try and decide loop issue when you try and apply changes ?

Could you list the current limitations a bit more clearly ?

 

Hello Joeythedude,

Thank you for your interesting in Acronis True Image

The issue concerns only when you apply the changes, there are no issues when you discard them.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

Greetings,

I am using True Image Home 2009 and am a victim of this very issue you describe. I was using Try & Decide, told it to Apply Changes, and it acted like it was applying changes but then went back to the same screen like I had never told it to stop the Try & Decide mode. All during this process I was seeing "Delayed Write Failed" error messages about C:\Mft$. I tried Applying Changes again and the same thing happened, so I rebooted. Now it's stuck in a loop where it gets past the POST screen and shows the beginning of the Acronis boot loader, then loops back and starts over again. Very frustrating.

Please advise? How do I remedy this?

 

*bump*

I'm borrowing someone's computer to post this message because I haven't been able to access my own since this reboot loop happened...would really love a response from Dmitry or someone else in support, please! Thanks

 

Hello MagGyver,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis Products

To solve the issue with a loop you should boot Last Good Known Configuration using F8 key while booting. See the following article for more details concerning Last Good Known Configuration option.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

I am currently experiencing the exact same problem as MacGyver (with one addition: as it wasn't responding when I told it to apply the changes I then asked it to discard the changes at which point it responded with "Failed to stop Try&Decide"). I am stuck in an infinite reboot cycle now.

I am unable to press F8 to select the last good known configuration because the PC is rebooting before Windows starts to load -- the "Starting Acronis Loader..." message is all that gets displayed before rebooting.

How can I fix this? Is the data on my HDD lost?

 

Hello cwm,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

To resolve the issue you can restore Windows boot loader manually. You can learn more on how to do it here. The operations you should perform depend on the operating system you use.

Also you can try to check the file system for corruption using Windows installation disk:

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:

"chkdsk DISK: /r"

where DISK is the partition letter you need to check.

After that, please reboot your computer.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

Thank you. I have not tried the chkdsk /r solution though as I managed to recover by restoring the track 0 from a previous acronis backup I had of the drive and have been able to use my computer since then.