Beware of Acronis "Leftovers" Issues

Normally I tend to think everyone commenting in a forum atmosphere is what makes it work. But please be sure to READ the ENTIRE THREAD and understand the issue at hand before pointing fingers.

I've said it before @Arvy, and I'll say it again. Thank you for all your help with this. You've gone above and beyond to help others and instead of paying you for finding a serious flaw in their software and coming up with a fix, as Acronis should have, they ousted you. (Probably cheaper that way.) Though I never experienced a BSOD issue with regard to Acronis' software, it's probably due to the changes they made in their program to "completely remove" ATIH after you pointed out the problem.

So yeah, negative thread indeed! And you can blame Acronis, not @Arvy.

 

Hello Arvy and all the thread participants,

Thank you for raising this topic and giving your suggestions in best practices on how to resolve the issues you faced during uninstallation of Acronis True Image Home 2012.

We apologize for any issues you have experienced while uninstalling our product, however we’d like to clarify how to properly uninstall Acronis True Image 2012 Home and avoid experiencing any of these issues.

Acronis True Image Home 2012 uses Lower-Level Filter Drivers and Upper-Level Filter Drivers for operations with hard drives. Both Lower-Level Filter Drivers and Upper-Level Filter Drivers are part of the device driver software and may influence the behavior of device hardware by modifying I/O requests to a particular device or provide added-value features for a device. The Class Filter Driver is as well a part of the device driver software, with the only difference to Device Filter Driver, that it will be applied to all devices of the same class. More about the Device Filter Drivers and Class Filter Drivers you can read in this MSDN article. Here you can also find the layered structure of the device driver software.

According to Windows Device Model, Acronis Filter Drivers will behave as a part of a device driver that communicates with Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) in order to translate the I/O requests to the device itself. In this Technet article you will find exhaustive information about Device Driver Dependencies and Interactions.

Following the Windows Device Model, if we eliminate the Acronis Filter Drivers from Upper-Level Filters and Lower-Level Filters, we will completely remove its influence on the I/O requests to a particular device. This procedure is thus strongly recommended every time you perform an uninstallation of Acronis True Image Home 2012 using Acronis True Image Home 2012 Cleanup Utility to ensure that the system will not encounter any problems during the next boot:

Go to Start -> Run -> regedit, and verify that there are no snapman*, fltsrv, tdrpman*, vidsflt*, timounter strings in the following keys:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} -> UpperFilters and LowerFilters
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{71A27CDD-812A-11D0-BEC7-08002BE2092F} -> UpperFilters and LowerFilters

In this Acronis Knowledge Base article you can find the information on use of the Acronis True Image Home 2012 Cleanup Utility.

Best regards,

 

The KB article you linked was last updated May 11, 2012.
How are you disseminating the info to "properly uninstall" ATI 2012?

 

And that "uninstall" utility has never been updated. It still requires more downloads to do for a Microsoft tool, figure out which version to use for your system, not reboot when the utility tells you so, etc.

At least the good thing is that Acronis cannot ban you from this forum for speaking out. I will never trust that company again.

 

Hello Dmitry. Long time no see, for reasons of which I'm sure you're well aware.

The problem, Dmitry, is not that we don't understand device class filters and what they do. In fact, some of us understand all too well their impacts on the operating system's normal (hardware abstraction layer) handling of certain devices -- such as the original ATIH 2012 release's problems with some external (USB) devices for example. The end result is that we end up "protecting" a modified system (quite significantly modified in some cases) rather than one with the original OS HAL capabilities we actually wanted to protect in the first place. Hell man, ATIH 2012 even disables and takes over Windows native backup capabilities completely in some cases.

But that is NOT really the primary issue here. As I said in post #106 above: "The 'badness' is not inherent in simply making some device class filter additions or other changes to the system registry, except insofar as those additions and changes may sometimes alter your OS HAL's device handling capabilities." And I've ignored completely some of the other ATIH 2012 "fluff" and its questionable insertions and intercepts.

The main problems discussed here reflect ATIH failures to uninstall itself cleanly and, in particular, the BSOD traps that are encountered all too often as a result of "leftovers" in the system registry. It's all very well for you to point out here the availability of supplementary "clean up" tools (which don't always work without disastrous results either, BTW) but how many innocent trial users have been similarly made aware by Acronis IN ADVANCE about that need and its potential consequences? In my own case, your company's "forum cops" actually banned me from warning and trying to help them after the fact. In fact, once their trial period has expired as one post here demonstrates very clearly, taking all of the remedial steps recommended by Acronis is practically impossible in any case.

It's all an attempt to obfuscate and paper over a very significant problem, Dmitry. And I'm sure that you know that yourself! Acronis is caught in a long-term historical trap of its own making. Even your CEO admitted his discomfort with the situation and stated in the Acronis forums that he'd be much happier if ATIH could just be made to work cooperatively with the OS HAL and VSS features like others do.

__
P.S.: Just to make it very clear, I'm certainly not happy myself to see this happening to a company that worked very hard in its early days to introduce an outstanding backup utility to the consumer marketplace and which I supported for many years. To the contrary, it's a damned shame. It's what always happens when one lets the "marketeers" take over the reins, override sound technological judgements, and rush out annual "upgrades" that are mostly half-baked fluff. Acronis has a long arduous road ahead if it hopes to win back the confidence of those who have been burnt once. Backup protection and "rescue" utilities just don't make suitable grounds for casual experiments.

 

I still find it painful that the instructions on the linked Acronis KB article came from users who were banned from the Acronis forums (Arvy is one of them). Two problems I have: 1) Only partial instruction is provided (Acronis would have done better to simply copy the instructional PDF file their other forum user, with Arvy's help, created); and 2) No credit is given, let alone monetary payment, to those who came up with the "solution" that Acronis basically stole and made their own.

As far as the problem at hand goes, like Arvy basically mentioned, I don't think anyone was looking for a description of the problem - most users of a forum such as this can figure that out if need be - but thank you for making it a little easier for those who are curious enough to look into the problem a bit more. And thank you as well for validating Arvy's concern. What we've truly been looking for, and for over two years now, is for a RESOLUTION to the problem. ATIH should have, all along, ininstalled itself properly without the need for outside tools and manual labor. And after all the problems in this regard with ATIH 2011, ATIH 2012 SHOULD NOT have been released with the same problems!

And that's not to mention the incredibly large number of other bugs and problems...

I see the short list for goals with ATIH 2013 (now in beta) includes to fix a few of the abhorrent problems associated with both 2011 and 2012. But it doesn't address the worst problems, nor even a majority of the problems, and intentions get us nowhere anyway.

Long live Macrium Reflect!!

 

I hope Dimtry takes away from this thread the full picture of what ATIH is doing to users.
From my standpoint, I was running a free trial, and upon removal, that trial software still left me with normal Windows Backup and Recovery control panel functions disabled and to me that seems as bad as malware having its way with my machine.

The trial locks a user out upon expiration, with no opportunity to go back into the program to reset anything prior to running the removal tool.

Going back after ATIH removal and re-enabling Backup and Recovery was only possible because I followed very specific registry edit steps that I was fortunate enough to locate here provided by Arvy.

 

I have to agree that parts of Dmitry's posting do seem just a little bit ironic to me too, especially this sentence:

But that, of course, is precisely what ATIH's uninstaller does NOT do. Moreover, according to the linked Acronis KB article, there's no really complete assurance that their so-called "cleanup" tool will actually do so either. You have to go into the registry to check for yourself and, although they make no actual mention of possible BSOD consequences, even they concede that you'd better not take a chance on rebooting your system before doing that manual registry check.

I do want to make it clear, however, that I make no personal claim of discovery. The roots of the current problem go back a long way and I'm quite sure that they were well known to Acronis long before I pointed them out in their forums. They've just become somewhat worse as time went by. I can only claim, perhaps, to have made the issues just a little more widely known to some users and thus more embarrassing to those responsible. Thus my "reward" from their "forum cops" was no doubt justified in their own eyes.

The question at the heart of it all, not answered by Dmitry's posting, of course, is WHY this "leftovers" issue has been allowed by Acronis to persist when its potential consequences are so obviously understood by them in such great and elaborate detail as confirmed by Dmitry's posting. To me, leaving such highly problematic remnants behind in the system registries of so many unsuspecting users -- especially completely innocent trial users -- is fundamentally dishonest.

I could say much more about what I suspect the answers to that underlying question might be, but I think it's probably best if I just leave it at that.

 

~ Snipped as per TOS ~ In no way did I hold Arvy responsible, I just said It's possible that it could be taken that way, Not that it was that way.

 

Looks to me like your comments can be very easily taken as critical of Arvy.
Good to learn that you didn't mean it that way.

 

I fully accept DVD+R's assurance that his comments weren't actually meant as any kind of personal criticism or attack. I didn't take them that way. Just as a well-intended warning about possible outcomes.

But as I said, regedit instructions, ANY of which might possibly be misapplied by somebody, are quite common even in Microsoft's own KB articles. In circumstances like these, they're the only in extremis solution I could offer (with appropriate warnings of my own) to fellow users and former users of the software.

__
P.S.: I should add that it was certainly possible to interpret those comments in various ways and I do appreciate very much the defence put forward by others on my behalf. Sorry if I seemed unappreciative. Just trying to "keep it cool", guys and gals.

 

Arvy,

God BLESS you!!! I was an unsuspecting Acronis user - I think it was automatically installed as freeware with a drive I purchased. I didn't even use the software! Some time down the road, after reading good reviews, I purchased Shadow Protect and, upon trying to install, it notified me that there was a conflict with Acronis. Thinking nothing of this, I found and uninstalled the Acronis drivers using Windows utility. That is when all my USB storage devices went lights out and I freaked. Of course, Acronis forums were little help, other than to confirm that this was an issue. I ran across this forum via a Google search. I am a complete computer novice but I followed your instructions (after reading a regedit tutorial on the web) and, presto, everything is beautiful and functioning again. You get 9786 karma points for relieving major amounts of stress and grief in my little corner of the world. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

 

Here's what I do after I uninstall Acronis or other similar software:

I open "C:\Windows\System32\drivers" folder in Windows Explorer, choose Details view, right-click on name field to choose columns to show, choose More (columns), and then choose 'Company' to display the company associated with each file. I sort them by company so I can see which ones belong to Acronis (or the backup, av, or fw software I'm trying to remove). Before I delete these files I search the registry for references to them so I can delete those too. It's important to delete registry entries to those files too, otherwise Windows may not load correctly because it's trying to load drivers that aren't there anymore.

Note: Windows RegEdit is kind of crap. I prefer Registry Workshop for registry editing although it's not free. In some cases registry entries are protected (especially for av that failed to uninstall correctly), in which case you have to change ownership/permissions on those reg keys first before deleting them, but deleting protected registry entries can be dangerous, so you have to play it by the ear as to whether or not to delete them or not. Best practice is to make a backup before cleaning leftover driver files and associated reg entries.

Note2: It's best to also check the "C:\Windows\System32" folder for remains too, although it rare to find any there.

 

@pajenn
Very good points but it's too bad a big vendor like Acronis would force its users to go through those steps, huh?

@roxandnate
Thanks for posting to indicate Arvy's work helped you out! I've always been very grateful to him for sharing what he learned through some horrid experiences with True Image.

 

Guys sorry to derail the conversation, just jumping in here as I need some 'house-keeping' assistance & the thread headline fits 100%.

I'm experimenting with various imaging systems right now. ShadowProtect won't install with the flag "Acronis has left "snapman.sys" in system & cannot proceed until its removed. JV16 Powertools cannot find it.

Where do I look & how do I remove this 'snapman.sys'?

Thanks,
AaLF

 

Did you even bother to Google the topic?
how to remove snapman.sys

 

I've already been down regedit road & wandered up Hot-key-local-machine Street. Dead ends everywhere. None of the suggestions of what to seek & delete were found. JV16Powertools file finder couldn't sniff out any of the snapman.sys variations.

Yet storagecraft won't proceed. Nevermind, plenty of other backup programs to explore.

 

I think @Page42 meant to link the following thread:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=316447

 

Thank you Arvy for the effort made. I was just reading through some of this thread, and in my opinion, Acronis, and I could name quite a few others who have horrible uninstall routines, and there is simply NO excuse for any company to put their paying customers through this kind of nonsense. It is called lack of respect for their customers computers and the customer themselves.

"removal" or clean up tools are a big thing with antivirus and other intrusive softwares, and it could all be handled much cleaner by actually creating a proper complete uninstall routine. Maybe these companies assume no one would ever want to remove their product, or transition to a better quality product. too many are going down this path and it is unfortunate.

Thanks again for your effort, now that this thread is almost a year old. It is still very much valid.

Jim

 

Here's my story of how I fixed it..

I installed 'Acronis True Image WD Edition Software' as a download from the Western Digital site, and used it to clone an existing system onto a new disk on my Win7-64 Home system. After uninstalling Acronis, I noticed that a device driver: vsflt53.sys was still running, and if I tested it with Windows 'verifier.exe' then it gave me a BSOD on boot every time. I then read all this. Aaargh..

Thanks to those here who have given advice on how to remove the registry entries left behind, I have successfully removed the entries and the driver doesn't load anymore. For those new to registry edits, here is what I did:

Note: my only issue was vsflt53.sys, I had no registry entries to the other files or services listed here.

1) Created a Windows 7 Repair disk.
2) Make a system backup, including a system image (this creates a 'Restore point')
3) Next day, after some normal use, I then booted with the Repair disk, and checked out its functionality by restoring my system to the Restore point made the previous day. At that point I knew I could recover the system if my edits didn't work.
4) Using the advice above, I opened Regedit and identified the Upper and Lower filters in the Classes mentioned. I only needed to delete one value - a lower filter reference to vsflt53.sys
5) Rebooted; everything worked (Note: at this point, the driver 'vsflt53.sys' was still being loaded. I'm not sure, but I think it does nothing once its removed from the filter, even though another registry entry loads it as required for boot)
6) Opened Regedit again, found the subkey entitled 'visflt53' (the folder with that title under /services/ ) and deleted it in its entirety.
7) Wiped sweat from brow, rebooted. Success! Now the driver isn't loading but the system works. Done!

Thank you to all who contributed.

BTW, I think the Acronis software did a really great job of helping me set up my new system. If they did a bit more work on ensuring a clean uninstall I'd use it again.

 

To all who have posted since last July, obviously I haven't been around here for quite a while as there didn't really seem to be much else for me to add here myself on this subject. I do sincerely appreciate everyone's input and your kind comments none the less. Thank you.

 

Is there a program that will detect the acronis drivers are still installed? Thanks

 

Another side effect of uninstalling Acronis 2012

I had Acronis 2012 installed on Lenovo Laptop with a built in SD memory card reader. I used add/remove programs to uninstall Acronis 2012 and I also used the Acronis Cleanup utility to remove the extra Acronis registry entries. After uninstalling Acronis 2012 the SD memory card Device was no longer present in the Device Manager and now was displayed as a Base Device with no driver installed. I tried to reload the SD memory Card drivers but it failed. After doing the Uninstall of Acronis 2012 the PCI Hardware ID of the SD memory card reader had changed and no longer matched the Hardware ID of .inf file in the device driver. The Hardware Id of memory card before uninstalling Acronis was VEN_1180&DEV_E823&SUBSYS_00011179 after the uninstall VEN_1180&DEV_822&SUBSYS_21F317AA

I got the drivers reinstalled by using this technique I found searching the internet.

Re: Drivers for Ricoh Media Card (SD card) reader on Carbon X1 not working

Spent a long time at this, Windows 8 x64. Selecting SD Reader and then Have Disk continued to refuse to recognize the driver. Instead what worked for me was similar but after clicking Update Driver> Browse my momputer for driver software> Let me pick from a list, I had to leave "All Devices" selected and then clicked Have Disk, browsed to the C:\Drivers\WIN\multicard\driver folder. How that makes a difference I do not know but for me it did. Hope this helps, must be a rare problem as there wasn't much information to be found otherwise.
Message 4 of 6 (1,572 Views)


I am using Windows 7 x64 operating system.

After using this technique and rebooting the computer my Device Hardware Id had changed to VEN_1180&DEV_E823SUBSYS_21F317AA

The only part that does not match the device driver .inf file is the subsystem id. The memory card reader is working again on the laptop.

I am now using Imaging for Windows as my backup software.

 

I just uninstalled TI11 as I wanted to try TI2014. I used the FREE REVO uninstaller and was surprised that REVO found about 300 places it the REG! Revo did a great job!

 

Hi MPSAN

No surprise unfortunately. Acronis is a real beast when it comes to ridding it from ones system, due to the same reason so much software is problematic...a deficient uninstall routine.

This is common for anti-virus, and a host of other software that must assume no one will ever desire to remove it. Typically, a company that does not offer complete uninstall routine within their software, assumes if it is ever uninstalled, it is usually for the purpose to 're-install' perhaps a newer version, etc., and not to actually remove it completely from a system.

Acronis knows better than this, and any software company that purposely leaves so many remnants of their product does so intentionally. Usually only when enough customers complain, will they offer an additional 'removal tool' which to me is redundant because that is what one wanted to achieve to begin with LOL

Glad you were able to get it cleaned up

Jim