Cannot boot from recovery CD; endless circle

Using TrueImage 7.0 on a laptop PC with Windows XP SP2, I have created a .TIB image of my system partition C: (partition size approx. 19 GB, used space approx. 7 GB, .TIB file size approx. 4 GB stored on drive D: ), and I also have created a recovery CD.

Now I want to restore the system partition to its former state, so I try booting from the recovery CD. I did change the boot order in the BIOS so the CD/DVD drive is first to boot from. Still, it doesn't work. The machine will start booting from the CD, the Acronis welcome screen will appear, then a DOS-like screen will say, "Loading, please wait ..."---and after several seconds, the whole procedure will start over automatically in an endless circle.

Only when I remove the CD from the drive then Windows will come up the usual way. But no way to get into the Acronis recovery system ...

What's going wrong here!? On my stationary tower PC (also Windows XP SP2) everything works fine! I am under the impression the fault is in the Windows XP set-up rather than in TrueImage ... but I don't know for sure. Does anybody have an idea?

-- uosag

 

I know Acronis will tell you to download the latest version and make the boot CD from it, but with all the problems being experienced with it ... I dunno. Version 8 build 937 seems to be the most stable version, but I don't know where you will get it now.

 

Did you try these steps?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

II. Problems with Acronis bootable rescue media (the full version) or Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. The diagnostics requires the full version of Acronis bootable rescue CD.

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 command line" prompt, please modify it in the following way:

quiet acpi=off noapic

and click on the OK button. That should allow you to use Acronis True Image in some special cases. Please contact support@acronis.com if you want to automate the process of adding these special parameters.

If this workaround is of no help please provide us with the following information:

a) If your computer doesn't boot into graphical interface.

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 remove the "quiet" word and click on the OK button. As the startup messages stop scrolling, you can use Shift+PgUp and Shift+PgDn keys in order to scroll the screen manually. Please write down the last few lines of the output, or use a digital camera to make shots of the output screens and send the captured information to us.

 

Pressing the F11 key goes completely ignored---no Linux kernel command line prompt ... no matter whether I have the Startup Recovery Manager activated or not.

However, after I tried (several times), by chance I happened to remove the CD at a special moment so a command line prompt said, "Unable to install inital ramdisk, press ENTER to continue ..." (actually, that was in German language). And after pressing ENTER, "Unable to load Linux kernel, press ENTER to continue ...". And then I was brought to Windows again.

Does that mean something ...?

-- uosag

 

That is of course not, and cannot be poblem of Windows.

I have similar problem, and all the newer builds and releases are getting only worse. I have found that only TI 7.0 v.572 boot disk is somewhat working on my laptop.

You could contact Acronis support and request a boot CD that works for you. They have them stored somewhere on ftp, but you need a link.

Yet another way is to use Bart boot CD and Acronis plugin, information can be found in support page.

Other than that, seems they don't care.

 

Hi, uosag

Sounds like it is a bad BootCD, try making another one.

Take Care,
TheQuest

 

In the meantime, I updated to Acronis True Image 7.0 build 638 and created a new rescue disc. However, this still does not solve my problem, even though the problem now is a different one.

Now the rescue system will boot from the CD and the True Image application will show up. But no matter what I do---as soon as I try to do anything useful (e. g. restore a partition image), I'll get this error message box:

E000101F4: Acronis True Image has not found any hard-disk drives.

(Of course, I get this in German language as I have a German version of the software.)

During the boot process, after "Loading, please wait..." I get another line saying, "ata1: disabling port". This does not sound healthy ...

Now, pressing the F11 key indeed brings me to the Linux kernel command prompt ... but entering that line does not make any difference.

Well, the offending line seems to be the following:

$ /bin/insmod ata_piix
Using /lib/modules/ata_piix.o
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:1f.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1d.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1f.3
ata: 0x1f0 IDE port busy
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x170 ctl 0x376 bmdma 0x14A8 irq 15
ATA: abnormal status 0xFF on port 0x177
ata1: disabling port
scsi0 : ata_piix

After that, many more lines follow (hope I picked the relevant ones). The machine has one physical hard disk (60 GB), divided into two partitions, plus a small unused area. It's a Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook E-8020.

Is there anything left I can do?

-- Olaf

 

You could try the Acronis BartPE plugin for True Image 8. I do not know for sure, but I would assume TI8 can restore images created with TI7.

If you can not access the plugin after you log in to your account on the Acronis web site, you may have to request a download link from support.

Good luck,
mustang