Acronis Media Builder - doesn't allow me to select usb key

Hi all,
I've just purchased Disk Director v10, hoping to make use of the 'Media Builder' tool to blow away a partition on a laptop with has a root kit on it.
To cut the story short - I just want to blow away the partition by booting into DD using the USB key. I've attached the screenshots of my issue. I'm running as the Disk Director v10 as Administrator, reformatted key as FAT32 (4 GB capacity). I'm at a loss at 'Step 2' as it shows that I've selected a 'Floppy' but I don't even have one on my system - why bother when USB keys are so cheap? I've also followed the guide https://www.wilderssecurity.com/supportfiles/acronis_bootable_usb_hd.pdf but in that guide, the USB key doesn't show as a floppy in step 2. Anyone had these issues? Is what I'm trying to do even possible?

Thanks for any help on this - really stuck!

 

Ok - I logged in with the administrator account (as opposed to running it as Administrator) - and I have a new error now. The key has just been reformatted (again) as FAT32. I did it twice before I ran Media Builder.

Strange

 

Welcome to the forum.

Do you have a Floppy Controller in the computer? If so, is it disabled in the computer's BIOS? Sometimes having the controller enabled without a drive connected can cause problems.

If Media Builder is having a problem seeing the flashdrive correctly, I would reset it using Vista's Diskpart program (instructions here). If that doesn't work, you could try setting it up using Grub4DOS and booting the DD ISO file (instructions here).

 

Thanks! Yes I've disabled the floppy controller permanently. I just did a BIOS flash too (Asus P5KC). It's 64Bit Vista - not sure if that may help. Anyhow, it is no huge issue as I can burn a CD but I'm guessing it's something inherent to my system. If I do sort it out I'll post up the solution.

Thanks for helping!

 

Interesting guide!

I will definitely try this to run my Acronis ISO from (my main SATA internal) harddisk.

(right now I extracted the necessary kernel and ramdisk per tool in order to boot them from harddisk [also with grub4dos], but this might make it possible to combine them all)

 

Worked instantly. Cool!

One thing I'd like to learn though: how can I configure the VGA mode?

(I could add vga=974 to the kernel line in my previous configuration to start individual programs in high resolution)

 

If you're using TI 11 or 2009, have you tried creating the ISO with the parameter included?

If that doesn't work, you may be able to edit one of the configuration files in the ISO using an ISO editor (UltraISO, for example).

I've tried before to get the vga=... command to work and it didn't seem to make a difference.

 

DD10 Suite. Too old?

Might try ISO editing later, if I find the time...

EDIT: was too curious and tried it now anyway: adding a separate line "vga 794" or adding vga=794" (it should have been this number in my previous post) to F11.cfg makes no difference. But learned something anyway, because grub4dos now complained that the ISO image file was not 1 contiguous file and I had to defragment the ISO file to solve that (did not know about that before).

EDIT2: F11.cfg? Can it be that this was an ISO containing a trial of TI11 or 2009? DD (only) iso images seem empty, but DOS (only?) files can be recovered with (the trial of) ISO buster... ?

 

The "not contiguous" ISO problem is easy to fix. Just add the --mem command to the line in the menu.lst file. For example:

Code:

title Acronis True Image Home 2009 (9,615)
map [COLOR="Red"][b]--mem[/b][/COLOR] (hd0,0)/ti-12-9615.iso (hd32)
map --hook
chainloader (hd32)
boot

I need to add a note for that in my guide. The option makes Grub4DOS load the ISO file into memory instead of running it from the device.

It's been a while since I've looked into the ISO of DD. Some of the files may be "hidden" in the bootable part (UltraISO extracts it as a BIF file). I'm not sure if the F11.CFG file is the correct one to edit.

 

I've just tried again with DD, TI 11 and TI 2009. None of them will change to any resolution I've tried. Acronis has posted that this should work with TI 11 (at least).

Exactly how did you have this setup before when it worked?

 

Extracted the kernel.dat and ramdisk.dat file from the DD ISO and used this configuration file:

Code:

timeout 0
default 0
title Acronis Disk Director 10.0 (2160)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /DD/kernel.dat quiet vga=794 ramdisk_size=40000
initrd /DD/ramdisk.dat

Not of much use for me actually, since this only works for the full version of DD which does not detect my (e)SATA drives...