Cannot assign Drive Letter to any Image...?

Howdy,

I run V8.

I needed to restore a single file that I have in any of several good images. But, when I tried to mount any of these, I got the error "Cannot Assign Drive Letter."

Indeed, I may have caused my own problem in that yesterday I discovered that my CD ROM drives were not visible to the system. I removed the Registry filter key (on the guidance of a tech support person from Dell) and with that all of my drives (including CD ROMS) became visible once again.

At that point, when I launched TI, it told me that it coould find no drives. That made (some) sense to me because of the re-assignment I had done.

I un-installed, then re-installed TI, and all seemed fine.

I immediately created an image at that point, and all was well.

Until now, that is...

I cannot assign a drive letter to any of my images, including the one that I created after the re-install.

I would, of course, welcome any suggestions on this.

Sincere thanks,

Kenneth

 

Hello KennethS,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please create the screenshot of the latest window of the image mounting wizard (with the summary of the operation) and send it to Acronis Support along with the link to this thread. We will certainly help you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

Hi Irina,

I thank you for your prompt reply...

I have sent an email with the information to support@acronis.com rather than using the support form you suggested.

That was because I wanted to send three screen shots, and could not figure out how to use the form for more than one.

All the best,

Kenneth

 

Hello Kenneth,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us.

If you do not receive any response from Acronis Support Team within 48 hours please let me know your Acronis Request # which will be sent to you in autoreply.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

Irina,

Please accept my sincere thanks,

Kenneth

 

Hello again Irina,

I have received no response (other than the automated) on:

Acronis #390149 Cannot assign drive letter to any image.

Again, I thank you for any help you might provide,

Kenneth

 

This is screwed up. I saw so many user complaining about this and no response anywhere!

 

You might check post #2 and post #4.

 

Hello,

Might you know of a work-around? Or, is it impossible for me to restore individual files if I cannot assign a drive letter?

(I should mention, that I used to be able to asssign drive letters, and restore individual files) but that no longer works.

Indeed, others may have posted about this, and I suppose, answers may reside somewhere in the forum, but unless I can learn how to search this thing properly, I am stuck.

Thanks for any further help,

Kenneth

 

Hello KennethS,

Since you said image mounting used to work for you but stopped recently, even after reinstalling TI8, maybe you have a Windows problem that is not related to the program. Or, maybe you installed some new hardware recently that caused an incompatibilty problem.

In any case, if the file is important to you, you could upgrade to TI9. That would give you two additional methods to restore your file even if image mounting does not work with TI9 on your system.

1. You can restore individual files from a full disk image using the recovery option from Windows.

2. You can use the same type of restore from the Recovery CD.


If you do not want to upgrade to TI9, there is another alternative I can suggest. You can download the Reatogo version of BartPE at http://www.reatogo.de. After you set up the package and run GetPlugins.exe you will see the Acronis Combo plugin. Install the "Full Version" of True Image and you will have a plugin that can mount images using a workaround method. This should work even if the problem is a hardware incompatibilty.

If you need help with this, just post back and I will help you.

good luck,
mustang

 

Hi Mustang,

I said something at the top of this thread about my belief that I may have caused my own problem...<g>

My CDROMs were no longer visible to Windows. I called Dell Tech and they walked me through a Reg hack that caused Windows to re-assign drive letters. That fixed the CRROM problem, but...

Shorlty after that, I found that I could no longer mount any TI created images.

Interestingly, I cannot mount any TI images that I have created AFTER making that registry modification.

Given this information, might you have any further thoughts about correcting this?

Sincere thanks,

Kenneth

 

Hello again,

Am I correct that the suggestion above applies to XP only? I should have mentioned that I run Win 2000.

Thanks again,

Kenneth

 

Hi again,

My error, 'sorry.

I checked the site further, and saw the product you were suggesting. I will see what I can do with it.

Thanks again,

Kenneth

 

Hello again,

Still no luck...

The bartpe is apparently also for XP only.

Thanks for any further thoughts,

Kenneth

 

Hello KennethS,

Sorry for the delay. I was away for the afternoon.

Windows 2000 does limit your options. You need an Win XP or Win2K3 disk for the source files to build a BartPE disk.

Have you considered an upgrade to TI9? If you still do not want to go that route, you may want to try a reinstall of Win 2000 using the repair option. This may fix your problem. That will keep all your programs and data in tact. If you do this, make sure to save a full disk image of your existing system before hand. Sometimes these "repair" installs cause more problems than they fix and other times they work fine. You will have to go through all the Windows updates and Service Pack upgrades that came after your disk was made.

To use the repair option you should have a Windows 2000 CD to boot from. I do not know exactly what Dell gave you when you bought the computer. Here is how it goes from a Microsoft Windows 2000 CD. When you start the install and get to the screen welcoming you to setup, you must choose to install Windows. Do not choose the second option to "Repair Windows". Next you should see the license screen. Press the F8 key. Now you should see a screen that shows your Windows 2000 system. It will give you the option to repair that existing system. Press the R key to take this option. From there the install is normal. If things do work out, you can restore the image you saved using the TI8 Recovery disk.

If you can not get to the repair option by using the disks Dell provided, you may want to put the computer back to its original condition using the Dell disks. Then you would have to reistall your programs and recover your data from your TI images.

 

Hi again,

Given what I have described about the re-assignment of the drive letters, I strongly suspect that this is a TI issue, rather than a system issue. Also, the support folks have written to me privately using the dreaded phrase "this is a known issue" and asking that I provide the usual run of diagnostic information.

Regarding going to V9... That is a possibility, but given all that I have read here, I am hesitant.

My strong desire is to get V8 to mount the drives, then, when things settle down here, I would be likely to give V9 a try.

Sincere thanks for your heop,

Kenneth

 

Hi Kenneth,

Do the images that you are trying to mount with a drive letter (Explore) span 2 or more CDs? If so, all the image parts need to be copied to a single location such as a folder on a hard drive.

In any event, you might try copying a backup image to a hard drive and see if you can Explore it from there.

 

Hey John,

Your comment is perfectly sensible given what I described, but...

In fact, all my images are on hard drives over a lan. Of course, I should have said that.

The support folks have already made a variety of suggestions so maybe we will solve this thing.

I will add that I have been experimenting with V9 (on a different system) and the "restore files" functionality is extremely easy to use, and very fast.

I am nervous about V9 because of all the headaches I have read about here, but given my (admittedly limited) experimentation, it may be the way for me to go.

Thanks for your comments,

Kenneth

 

Hi Kenneth,

If you still do not want to try TI9, I have another trick up my sleeve. I'll post it here in the hope it may help you and some other people with image mounting problems (including those who are running Win2K3 Server).

While TI is trying to assign a drive letter and before you see the error message that a drive letter can not be assigned, open "Disk Management". You may see a partition with no drive letter that has the volume label of your image. If you do, it means the image has been successfully mounted but TI is not able to assign it a drive letter. At this point right click the partition and choose Change Drive Letters and Paths from the menu. In the next window click the Edit button; (this will be the Change button in Win XP). Now choose the letter you asked TI to assign and click ok. Click Yes on the next screen to execute the change. You should see a drive letter assigned in Disk Management. You have to act fast in this process because the partition will be unmounted when TI times out and shows the error message. If you get the drive letter assigned in time, the partition will stay mounted.

At this point, Windows Explorer will probably not be able to see the newly mounted partition. You will need a third party file management utility to see it and restore your files. The A43 File Management Utility should work. It is freeware and runs from a folder on your hard drive. It does not make any registry changes, so it is easy to get a clean uninstall. Just do a google search and you will find numerous download links.

Hope this helps.



Edit

I fogot to mention you can remove the drive letter from the mounted image using Disk Management. However, the image stays mounted untill you reboot the system. Also, this does not hurt your image file in any way. I have used this method many times to mount an image with my version of the BartPE True Image plugin.

mustang

 

Hello KennethS,

I have traced your correspondence with Denis. Please export the registry keys (choose the necessary key then: Registry -> Export Registry File) below and send them to us:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E967-E325-11C
E-BFC1-08002BE10318}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{71A27CDD-812A-11D
0-BEC7-08002BE2092F}

This will allow us to investigate the problem.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

Hi Irina, Mustang, and others,

I finally decided to grab the trial V9...

I have devoted hours (as have the kind folks from Acronis Support) but still cannot eliminate the problems I have had with V8.

We shall see if I can do any better with V9.

Optimism abounds...

Kenneth

 

OK, then what I said doesn't apply.

There's always one more thing to go wrong it seems.

I think that's worthwhile. The last two builds of TI 9 seem to have solved many problems although some persist.

 

Howdy,

It did not take long for me to discover that I cannot mount a drive with V9 either.

Here is what I did, and the results I got:

I clicked “Plug Image”
I selected image on our lan
I selected a particular backup date
TI told me that the Drive letter would be “H:”
I clicked Proceed
The progress clock appeared
I then got a Windows dialog:

“System Settings Change”
Windows 2000 has finished installing new devices. You must restart etc. Do you wish to restart.

Then another:
“Unsafe removal of device.”

Attached is an image of the screen with the dialogs moved around to display all three…

Also attached here are the event logs, one for SYStem, and one for APPlications.

Do these products ever just “work”…?

Thanks,
Kenneth

 

Hello again,

I should have mentioned that I have also tried to "Restore Individual files" with V9, and that worked just fine.

"Plug an Image"? No luck...!

'Gotta love this stuff...

Now, at the practical level, is there any real reason that I might need (or want) to plug an image if the individual file restore process works? I would appreciate comments on this issue as in V9 I had to mount the image to restore individual files.

All the best,

 

Howdy,

That should have been "as in V8 I had to mount" etc.

'Sorry,

Kenneth