Acronis TrueImage Failed Need Help with "invalid partition table" Error

Hi all,

I am disappointed that Acronis True Image to say the least. Many months ago I did a brand new install of Windows XP SP2 on my hard drive. The hard drive was partitioned cos) dprograms) edocuments). I installed all my drivers and security patches. I then created a full back up of my C: drive onto my external usb drive. I then verified the backups twice.

So today my windows was acting poorly and I decided I would just do a recover using acronis (hell the software said it was a breeze). Only changes that I have had done to my computer (since that backup) was I added a new drive a few months ago (partitioned f: g: h.

So opened true image 10 and went through the menus, verfied my backup, and then went ahead and did a recover partition (c. Windows reboots acronis loader comes up does it thing and then in the end hangs and freezes. I then reboot thinking oh boy something went wrong. But to my surprise it booted into windows. However I went into the services and the screen was blank. Basically the restore was not perfect but functional.

So I burned the Acronis boot loader to cd and rebooted and tried to restore that way. Again my backup is on my external drive. Well this time around the application was just not doing anything when I went to look for the source to restore from. It just showed my computer but none of the partitions including the external usb drive one (that housed the backup).

So I shutdown and disconnected one of internal drives just in case. Rebooted and then I got the "invalid partition table" error.

True image hosed my mbr I think. I did a reinstall of windows on the c: drive and when windows was complete with the install still got a "invalid partition table"

So then I went and installed an older hard drive I had previously that had windows on it. Left my other drive connected and my old copy of windows booted up no problem. I am pretty sure the problem is MBR related. Anyone have any advice on how to repair it and or recreate it without me having to lose the other partitions on the drive which are intact

 

You have the option to restore just the MBR to the HD from the original system backup.

 

NumLock thanks for the reply.

Assuming the mbr and the backup is damaged is there anyway to repair just the mbr?

 

Off the top of my head:

Issue the following commands once your in:
win98 boot floppy: fdisk /mbr
windows xp Recovery Mode (boot into the installation CD): FIXMBR

 

Yup I tried the windows xp repair console command fixmbr. It didn't work unfortunately.

 

The Fix.

I have managed to fix my issue by doing the following. Hope this helps anyone else out there. Remember that originally my primary drive had 3 partitions. I did a backup of my drive after I installed the OS fresh. Months later I added another drive. Recently I did a restore of the original back using Acronis 10 and it hosed my system.

I downloaded Hiren's BootCD 9.6. burned and booted off it, then went to the MBR tools section and then I ran Boot Magic 8.0. I set the C: drive as the first boot drive and rebooted. Everything was back to normal. My main hard drive was booting.

 

I don't know why it failed to boot.... technically; it wont matter if you added a new drive or not; because it is only when Windows has been booted will it detect and configure the new drive (since you had the image before adding the new drive).

Disk 1
- First Partition (c)
- Second Partition (d)
Disk 2
- Third Partition (e)
- Fourth Partition (f)

I can restore C to a point in time when E and F was non existent and there should be no problems when booting into that active partition. (Q: when you restored just the C partition to the Disk 1:First Partition did you set it to be an Active partition?) because if not then there is a high possibility that the BIOS since detecting that it is not an active partition would not boot into it.

Another if on boot up you don't see the new disk; you goto my computer > manage > Disk Management and add Drive letters to the partitions in the new Disk.