Bootable USB Flash Drive with Build 2160

Has anyone else noticed this problem? On previous builds of DD10 (the last one I used was 2117), the Bootable Media Builder app could be used to create bootable CD or bootable USB flash drive versions of the Acronis products.

The last time that I did this I used DD10 build 2117 and TI Home build 4940 to create a bootable USB flash drive with these 4 programs on it:

1. TI Home (Full Version)
2. TI Home (Safe Version)
3. DD10 (Safe Version)
4. DD10 (Full Version)

When starting, a menu screen would come up and allow me to choose which of the four Acronis products to run.

Using the latest build of DD10 (Build 2160) and creating the same set of programs on a bootable USB flash drive, I find that it skips the menu screen and goes directly to the first product in the list, which is TrueImage. So I cannot select menu items 2, 3, or 4.

As an experiment, I created a drive with only DD10 full version, and the computer boots directly to DD10 and skips the selection screen. If I repeat the test with two programs, again I find that the PC will boot directly to the first program and skip the menu screen.

Curiously, if I create a bootable CD instead of a bootable USB flash drive, it works correctly and shows the menu screen.

Anybody else seeing this?

 

Hi Mark,

Hmm, that's odd.

I've just created the Acronis bootable media containing DDS 10.0 Build 2160 (Full & Safe versions) + OS Selector + True Image 9.0 Build 3677 (Full & Safe versions) on a USB flash drive that had been formatted as both FAT and FAT32 in turn. In each case the flash drive booted into the multiple selection screen.

Out of interest, when you updated from DDS 2117 to 2160, did you first uninstall 2117, delete the Program Files\Acronis\Acronis Disk Director folder and then reboot your system before installing the new build? If not then it might be worth doing that, recreating the bootable flash drive and seeing how it goes.

Regards

 

Menorcaman:

Yes, I did uninstall build 2117, reboot, and then install build 2160 of DD10 before trying to create a bootable USB flash drive version of the Acronis recovery programs.

I wonder if I need to go back and first delete the contents of C:\Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\Media Builder?

Thank you for taking the time to do this experiment.

 

There is clearly something wrong with your media builder Mark, so it's certainly worth giving it a go.

Regards

 

Menorcaman:

This is definitely a bug in the latest version of Bootable Media Builder. Here's what I did to troubleshoot:

1. Uninstall Disk Director 10 build 2160
2. Delete C:\Program Files\Acronis\Disk Director
3. Delete C:\Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\Media Builder
4. Reboot
5. Reinstall build 2160 of DD10
6. Check that the two folders in steps 2 and 3 were re-created
7. Using Linux, completely zero the contents of my USB flash drive (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb1)
8. Using Windows, re-format the USB flash drive as a FAT32 volume

Now I find that if I use Bootable Media Builder and I check off all Acronis Products (in my case that's TI Home 10 full and safe, Disk Director 10 full and safe, and OS Selector Activator and OS Selector Setup), then it works, meaning that the PC boots to the bootwiz-based Acronis Loader and displays the menu screen.

If I repeat the creation of a bootable USB flash drive but uncheck only one Acronis product, then I see the bug, which is that the Acronis Loader is skipped and the PC boots directly to the first product in the list (TI Home full, in my case).

I assume that when you did your tests you had checked off all products?

I've filed a bug report with Acronis.

 

Yes, that's correct. See my post at #2 above.

Please advise exactly what it is that you had selected and deselected and I will see if I can replicate your problem.

Regards

 

Menorcaman:

I tried several combinations and the only one that worked was if all six products were checked off. But here is one for you to try; it's the one that I wanted originally. These 3 were selected:

1. TI Home 10 (full)
2. DD 10 (full)
3. DD 10 (safe)

These three were unselected:
a. TI Home 10 (safe)
b. OS Selector Activator
c. OS Selector Setup

I note that you're running TI v.9, so it will be interesting to see if you get the same results.

Thanks again for your time and effort.

 

Hi again Mark,

OK. FAT32 formatted a 512MB USB flash drive and created the bootable rescue media containing TI 9.0 Home Build 3677 (Full version), DD 10.0 Build 2160 (Full version) & DD 10. Build 2160 (Safe version).



As you can see, everything is as it should be.

The only difference between us is that I'm using TI 9 and you're using TI 10. Hopefully someone else using TI 10 and DD 10 Build 2160 will now chip in with their own results.

Regards

 

Mark,

I've been messing (although fighting may be a better work) with this this morning and have managed to create the bootable usb drive. However, I'm having constant problems getting it to boot on my P5B-Deluxe/WiFi board. Sometimes it boots and sometimes it doesn't. (I never got the "selected programs" version to boot on the P5B.) I can go into the BIOS and disable everything except the USB drive and it will still boot from the hard drive.

Anyway, I created the usb drive with everything and also with just TI full, safe, and DD full and when tried on another computer it boots up properly showing the selected apps (either all of them or just the selected ones).

I do get an error during boot, though. It said MBR ERROR 3 on my P5B and MBR ERROR 2 on my other computer. It then shows the line Starting Acronis loader... and continues normally.

I just quick formatted my drive between builds so I don't know if that caused any problems. I didn't completely wipe in in Linux yet and see if that helps.

I tested the following builds from Vista:
DD 10 build 2,160
TI 10 build 4,940

 

I think I found out the booting problem. I had the usb drive formatted as FAT since that's what it defaulted to. That made it show up as a HARD DRIVE in the BIOS. I changed it to FAT32 and now it shows up as a REMOVABLE DRIVE and seems to boot fine. In any case, it seems to work to just select several of the Acronis programs and have it boot to the Acronis menu.

 

Menorcaman and MudCrab:

Very interesting. Sounds like it's me who has the problem. To be extra-sure, I tried again by removing everything Acronis from the PC, rebooting, and then downloading and installing fresh copies of build 2160 of Acronis DiskDirector and build 4940 of TI Home. But, alas, I get the same end result with Bootable Media Builder on a USB flash drive.

Since both of you see proper functioning of the Bootable Media Builder, the problem must be on my end, but I sure don't understand why.

For now I will just live with having all installed products on the bootable media. Thank you both for your time and effort. If I ever figure this out I'll let you know.

 

MudCrab:

In the process of doing this, I discovered something very interesting. I recently updated the BIOS on my IBM laptop, and one of the changes they made was to have the BIOS assign DOS drive letters to all attached USB devices, whether bootable or not.

What this means for me is that if I boot the laptop from a bootable Acronis USB flash drive and start Disk Director 10 in "safe" mode (DOS-based), then DD10 can see any and all removable drives! So I can now use DD10 to repartition and work on USB flash drives.

You can't do this with the "full" mode (Linux-based) version or the Windows version of Disk Director, because they won't recognize removable drives.

Your BIOS has to do the mapping of removable device to DOS device in order for this to occur, and my IBM lappy is the only machine that I've ever seen able to do this.

 

Mark,

I may have missed it in the previous posts, but does the Media Builder work correctly when you make a bootable cd? Or does it have the same problem as the usb drive?

 

I only tested that once, and when I did I had all 6 products checked off and it worked OK. I haven't tried making a CD with only some of the products yet.

 

Well, whattaya know...

Acronis just released build 4942 for TrueImage Home 10, so I installed it. When it installed, it replaced some of the files in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\Media Builder directory. One of them, gen_bootmenu.exe, has a timestamp of 2/17/2007 whereas the file that it replaced was dated 2/22/2007, so the replacement was dated earlier than the existing file. A few others were also replaced with dates earlier than the existing file dates.

And now it works correctly again. So evidently, the version of Bootable Media Builder that is included with TI10 build 4942 has fixed the problem that I was seeing. (I tried this on 2 computers to be sure that it wasn't a fluke).

Response from Acronis after filing a bug report:

"Please install the new build 4942 for TrueImage..." (paraphrased)

 

Re: Well, whattaya know...

http://gladiator-antivirus.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/z7shysterical.gif

Seriously though, I'm glad you managed to sort it.

Regards