Cannot Restore

In order to give myself the confidence that "it works" (and to provide me with experience in case I ever need to restore) I thought it would be a good idea for me to attempt a full system restore even though there are no problems requiring a restoration.

I have Acronis True Image 11 loaded on a 6 months old Dell Vostro laptop funning XP Pro,

I took the precautions first, though, of creating a bootable cd and verifying the backup.

Having pressed "proceed" for restore to start, after a while I got the message that I needed to reboot so I ticked the reboot box.

About 10 minutes passed and all I had was a blank screen.

So I thought I'd boot from my newly created bootable disc.

That didn't work so I altered the bios so that the pc might boot up from the CD first.

This worked and I got the nice blue Acronis screen with two options-

"Continue to boot windows""

and

"Acronis True Image Home - Includes drivers for USB/PCCard/SCSI hard disks"

The first time I chose the windows image and it just booted up normally.

The second time I chose the second option and I got a different nice blue Acronis screen and there was a lot of noise of activity from the cd drive. After about a minute I got the blank screen again so I removed the disk and booted up normally (a) to see if I had anything at all on by "C" drive and (b) if I had, to see if there was anything new in the Acronis log to confirm that it had restored.

It booted up normally and all my stuff was there on the "c" drive as before. I ran Acronis and had a look at the log. Again, nothing has been added to the log so I guess it hasn't touched my "C" drive. The last entry in the log is-

"Reboot is required for completing the operation; the operation will be cancelled if you choose not to reboot now. : reboot/cancel: User replied: reBoot"

Can anyone see anything I'm doing wrong here. Thanks.

 

The first time I chose the windows image and it just booted up normally.

The second time I chose the second option and I got a different nice blue Acronis screen and there was a lot of noise of activity from the cd drive. After about a minute I got the blank screen again so I removed the disk and booted up normally (a) to see if I had anything at all on by "C" drive and (b) if I had, to see if there was anything new in the Acronis log to confirm that it had restored.

It booted up normally and all my stuff was there on the "c" drive as before. I ran Acronis and had a look at the log. Again, nothing has been added to the log so I guess it hasn't touched my "C" drive. The last entry in the log is-

Only thing you doing wrong is that you are not giving enough time for Acronis True Image to be loaded and appeared.
when you selected 2nd option above to boot INTO true image and you got black screen after a minute or so ----that sounds normal. screen will go black for about 1-2 minutes before Acronis True Image will load and you will be into nice Graphical User Interface with all kinds of options. From that point you select Restore and follow steps. hope that helps!

 

"Only thing you doing wrong is that you are not giving enough time for Acronis True Image to be loaded and appeared.
when you selected 2nd option above to boot INTO true image and you got black screen after a minute or so ----that sounds normal. screen will go black for about 1-2 minutes before Acronis True Image will load and you will be into nice Graphical User Interface with all kinds of options. From that point you select Restore and follow steps. hope that helps!"

Thanks for this. I've booted again only this time I've followed your advice about leaving a longer interval. In fact, I've waited 10 minutes and the screen is still blank.

Just to recap, the pc boots up from the bootable disk with the message "Starting Acronis Loader." I then see a "proper" Acronis screen. I take the first option (not the other one which just starts windows normally) and get a second "proper" Acronis screen accompanied by about a minute of noisy activity from the region of the cd drive. Then the screen goes blank. And after 10 minutes it's still blank.

 

I've just attempted the restore again and here is the detail of what I did-

I select the backup archive on my USB remote drive which I want to be restored.

I select "Restore disks or partitions"

It then asks what I'd like to restore and I tick the "c" drive.

It the "analyses partition "C""

It then asks me to select a target partition or unallocated space for the restore. There are two choices. The "c" drive and the "e" drive (The "e" drive is by External USB Hard DRive" I choose the "c" drive.

It then asks whether I'd like "Active" or "Logical" Partition Type. I accept the default of "Active."

I ignore the next screen which asks me to specify the size and location of the restored partition.

I accept the default ("c") on the drive letter.

I decline the invitation to restore ANOTHER partition at the same time.

I accept the default options.

It then gives me the following summary-

Disk Partition Recovery from Archive:
From file: E:\MyBackup(1)2.tib

Operation 1 of 2 (Reboot Required)
Deleting partition
Hard Disk 1
Drive Letter: C:
File System: NTFS
Volume Label: (Nothing is quoted for this)
Size: 111.7GB

Operation 2 of 2
Restoring partition
Hard Disk 1
Drive Letter: C:
File System: NTFS
Volume Label: (Nothing is quoted for this)
Size: 111.7GB

I press "Proceed"

I get the message that the scheduled task has started.

After about 30 seconds I get a "Warning!"

"W000A03EB Reboot is Required
A reboot is required for completing this operation; the operation will be cancelled if you choose not to rebboot now"

I click "reboot"

I slip my bootable cd into the "d" drive (oo-errr mrs....) and it boots up from the bootable cd.

I then get exactly the same result as I got before - i.e. - after I choose the "Acronis True Image Home - Includes drivers for USB/PCCard/SCSI hard disks" option followed by the second "Acronis" screen the screen stays blank for over 5 minutes.

A poster on the Digital Spy Forum tells me he gets THREE options when I only get two- These are-

1: Acronis True Image Home (Safe Version) no USB/SCSI support
2: Acronis True Image Home (Full Version) with USB/SCSI support
3: Windows

 

Hello peterfoster,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Backup software.

Please note you do not have to boot from Bootable CD when you are trying to restore c: partition and reboot is required. The program should continue restoring without booting from Acronis Rescue Media. Please note also it would be safer if you restore system partiton under Acronis Bootable Rescue Media. Following your comment about three options instead of two you can see, this means that the Bootable CD mentioned on the Digital Spy forum contained Safe Media plug-in which does not support USB/SCSI devices. You can also download Acronis True Image 11 Home Safe Media plug-in from your account on Acronis web site, but this will not make the trick as the image you are trying to restore is in your USB hard disk drive.

In order to fix the issue we recommend you to make sure that the build number you are currently using is 8053 which is the latest one. You can find this out from Help -> About menu. If it is not the latest please feel free to register your serial number and download Acronis True Image 11 Home build 8053 in the following way:

- Go to https://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/my/index.html and register there. If you have already been registered please skip this step.
- Enter your Home Page at Acronis web site typing your e-mail and password in the fields in the right part of the screen.
- If you have not registered Acronis True Image 11 Home yet please go to the "Product Registration" section. Then please type the serial number for Acronis product and click Register.
- After product registration please go to Product Updates section and click the name of the product you registered before.
- Click "Get Update" link and save it on your hard disk drive.

After that please recreate Acronis Bootable Rescue Media and check if you can boot from it and restore your system partition. If this does not help please try to use "acpi=off noapic" workarund as described in Acronis help Post.

Thank you
--
Nikita Sakharov

 

I would suggest that doing a trial restore onto your working hard drive is rather risky, if anything goes wrong your will be up the proverbial creek. If you want to do a trial restore (and this is the recommended way to make sure that TI works with your hardware) then buy a new hard drive for your laptop and restore a whole disk image to that.

Change your bios to boot from CD and boot the TI rescue disk, make a new backup of the whole of your hard disk, tick disk 1 and not C:\, change the hard drive to the new blank disk, no need to format or partition and reboot the rescue disk and carry out a restore. If all goes well you can be sure that TI will get you out of any future problems.

If the rescue CD hangs after booting the full version of TI then search this forum for posts concerning non booting rescue disks or contact Acronis support with details of your problem.

 

You can always try the Safe Media/Safe Mode version of TI 11 even if you need to access your USB drive. On some newer computers, USB drives are accessible through the BIOS and will be accessible using the Safe Mode version. It's usually a lot slower, but it can work (especially if your image file isn't really large). Make sure the USB drive is plugged in and turned on before you boot the computer.

 

Hello, Nikita

Many thanks for your detailed response.

You say:

"In order to fix the issue we recommend you to make sure that the build number you are currently using is 8053 which is the latest one."

I've checked and the version I have is 8053.

I have de-installed, reinstalled and created another bootable disk but when I use it there is no change - i.e. I still just have the two options rather than the three I need.

I note you say "if this doesn't help please try to use "acpi=off noapic" workaround in Acronis help post."

I will try this.

 

Nikita

I've looked at the "workaround" and I'm afraid I haven't got the confidence to make those adjustments.

Thw "workaround" talks about "selection screen advising you to select either "Full", "Safe" or "Boot into Windows"" but I don't get these three options! I just get the two options I described earlier. I've got a Dell laptop that is about 6 months old running Windows XP Pro and I'm dissappointed that this latest version of the software (8053) won't work for me without the need to make these adjustments. After all, what I'm trying to achieve is pretty basic - to restore my "C" drive from a backup saved to my USB External Hard Drive. And my "c" drive is only 12gb.

 

You can press F11 on the Acronis menu screen. It doesn't matter if you have the Safe Media option or not as the F11 parameters only change settings for the Full Mode version.

Just boot the TI CD, press F11 at the Acronis menu and type in acpi=off noapic after the word quiet so it looks like
quiet acpi=off noapic
and press OK. Then click on the TI Full menu entry to start the program.



If the parameters works for you, you can create a new TI CD that has those options set so you don't have to enter them every time.

 

Hello, Mudcrab

I've followed your instructions and I'm happy to report that it works! Thanks very much indeed to you and everyone else who has helped.

Is it straightforward to include the "quiet acpi=off noapic" on a new TI Cd although it isn't really much work to press F11 and key it in each time.

 

See this thread and Post #4 for the screenshot.

 

Thanks, Mudcrab. You're a saint.

 

I am pleased MudCrab's solutions have worked for you.

With version 11 of TI the Safe Mode version of the TI rescue disk is not included in the original download, you have to register on the Acronis website, download and install the Safe Mode separately.