Bad File Extensions on backup Restore

After using Acronis Home 10 to restore my files from a hard drive failure, I have bad file extensions on virtually every file that was restored. I am attaching a screen capture with images of my start menu, my My Music folder, and my desktop that was restored by Acronis Home. I have to manually fix EACH and EVERY FILE. Is this typical? If so, I am very dissatisfied with the program.

Any ideas? What went wrong?

 

What build of TI Home do you have?

Could you please explain how you made the backup. Did you select the entire Drive/Partition option or the Files and Folders option?

How did you do the Restore? Did you boot from the TI Recovery CD? Did you select Restore? Did you separately install Windows before doing the restore?

I've never seen a drive/parition image restore produce the results that you have. What a mess!

 

tcooper185,

This is indeed extremely weird. If you could answer John's questions in detail as to how the backup was created and restored, it would be interesting to see if it could be duplicated.

I'm assuming it was a files and folders type backup.

Could you let us know if you already had shortcut links in your Accessories Menu? Did you already have "Calculator" and "Calculator.lnk" in this folder before the backup? It's curious that some were duplicated and some were not. "Calculator", "Paint", "Windows Movie Maker", etc.

 

TI Home version 10.0 build 4,942 (downloaded from the link I received in my email that confirmed my purchase)

I didn't want to make a full C: drive backup, as I was having issues w/ Windows and was reformatting the drive. Instead, I selected the entire Documents and Settings folder to save my and my wifes work. I confirmed it backup up all of my needed files (Docs, music, pics), and went about formatting and reinstalling Windows. I backed up to a separate internal HD.

After the reinstall of Windows, I redownloaded TI Home and used the Home Console to restore the Documents and Settings folder (Using the Recovery selection). Choose to restore it to the Original Place, Default Options, Overwrite Existing Files.

I did get an error message during the backup, but it was just that it wasn't able to back up a couple of my downloaded Podcasts. Got an error message that it couldn't restore a vidcast, then got "This File is Corrupted" and it stopped restoring.

Since I had already completed a reinstall of Windows, I already had my Start Menu populated with the normal Windows things. As to the duplication/not, I did begin deleting some of the "bad" .lnk files that were there, then I decided to post to this board.

Any ideas?

 

So you did the Files & Folders "My Data" backup (checked the "Documents and Settings" folder) from Windows and also did the restore from Windows. Correct?

 

Great details on what you did. Thanks!

The problem is that the Documents and Settings folder contains a lot more than standard data files. Restoring everything in that folder is where the problem came from. The Start menus are part of that folder, for example.

If you happened to make an image after reinstalling Windows but before you restored the Documents and Settings folder, I'd restore that. Otherwise, you may have to reinstall Windows to be sure the system is clean.

When you restore from the Documents and Settings backup, select only files you know are data such as My Documents, My Pictures, the email files, etc. Do not restore anything else, and you will be fine.

In the future, make full system images or select the data folders for a files and folders backup so you won't be tempted to restore files that cause problems.

 

Mudcrab: That is what I did.

JMK: Thanks for the info. That's what I figured, but was confused about all of the bad file name extensions and the incomplete restore (not all of the files were restored).

Seems like there should be a more-clear option in TI Home to only back up documents/music/pics on one drive. I know it gave me the option to back up things like Finance, Music, Documents, Video, but that was across my entire computer. I edit video on this computer and had 400 GB (yes, that's GB) of video on other drives in the machine. I knew I was reinstalling Windows and only wanted to backup the Finance, Music, Documents, and Video on the C: and E: drives, but wasn't given that option.

So instead, I had to choose the manual "Documents and Settings" folder.

I still don't understand the bad file extensions, though. Like on my desktop, why were those files not restored correctly?

Thanks for the info!

 

That's a good point. With 400GB of data included, the backups would be a real pain!

The icons on the Desktop may all be shortcuts. The generic icon would indicate that they are not pointing at the file correctly. That suggests the location changed.

Right click one of the "bad" icons and the click Properties. Check the full path shown. How does that differ from the actual location of the file now?

Is the Drive letter different? Is there a difference in the folders in the path? If you used a different user name when reinstalling Windows, your My Documents will now be under that user name, but the old shortcuts will be pointing to My Documents under the original user name.

Let us know what you find out. This is an interesting case.

 

That's also where it is interesting. The items on the Desktop were the actual files, but the extension (had the extra text) was messed up so the programs (Word, Adobe, etc) didn't recognize them. Once I deleted off the extra stuff in the extension, they were recognized as Word docs or whatever, and I was able to go about my way. But you see my desktop...I shouldn't have to do that for all of those files (and most of those were files, not shortcuts to files elsewhere).

User names were the same before and after. Items were set to restore to their "original location" in TI Home.

I've reformatted and am restoring using my backup on the beta of Windows Home Server. I actually tried one more time to restore that backup, and I got the same "Corrupted File" error and it stopped restoring. So I reformatted again and am pretty much done with TI Home.

I'd love to figure out why this happened, though. I always heard great things about Acronis.

 

Hello tcooper185,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please notice that as I can see your issue is being worked upon. Therefore, please follow Nikita's instructions and collect Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Then send a reply to the letter with Acronis request number you received. Attach all the collected files and information (and build number) 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 a solution.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov