I really liked TI 2009 until...

I really liked TI 2009 until I had to actually restore my laptop. I don't have any cd of XP as my laptop came with it already installed. TI restored everything path incorrect - C:\drive c\ I can't boot my laptop, I can't do anything with it. Anyone with any ideas? My laptop came with eRestore, but I can't access that either - suposed to be F10 during boot, but it don't work either. Only way I can get TI to work is with the boot CD. I really need that back up as it has the license for XP.

I did do a search on this, and I found something :
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=166677&highlight=Restore problems wrong path

It is from Feb 2007, in that post, no one had a solution...

Please, someone help me with this...

 

I suspect you didn't backup the entire drive - where you put the check mark against Disk 1 in selecting what to backup. It sounds like you did a Files And Folders backup. So if I'm reading this right, your next step should be to save all your data and documents by using a bootable BartPE cd and an external usb drive.

If the laptop came with XP there will be a sticker on the underside with the XP Product ID.

 

I had never turned over the laptop in the 3 years I've had it until you told me to! Is it safe to say I can use an XP install cd from another desktop computer to re-install - just use the key under the laptop

 

I don't think that will work. Those product key stickers should be "locked" to the OEM version that came with the laptop. If you don't use that exact OEM version, that key likely won't work with just any XP install CD.

Can you provide more info on what happened? How did your laptop come to require a reload? What did you do first to restore? Can you access the hard drive at all? Does your BIOS show correct settings and recognizes the hard drive being installed?

Best thing to do is to use a BartPE rescue CD or Windows Ultimate Boot CD but that's some work if you have never done it or have a secondary PC on which to acquire them and write them to CD. Both BartPE and UBCD will allow you to boot up and peruse your system and the BartPE will allow you to use a True Image plug-in to access and possibly restore the image. Again, that's some work if you have not done it before.

If you can provide more info, there might be some more help info forthcoming...

 

Yeah, figures.

My computer kept locking up on me. And it was fat32 - I had a backup, so... TI let me reformat C: drive, and then I discovered I had made a terrible mistake.

I had done TI on my laptop, & desktop. Ie, created the hidden partition, I didn't want to do a drive image, just all the files. Thus the backup. Like I said, C: was fat32, I thought I wanted NTFS and TI did that for me. When I did the restore, TI put everything in a folder called drive c. If I could boot up, I would just move everything up one level - to the root. I have not been haveing any success so far. Does XP make a bootable CD? Perhaps I can create one off my desktop, run it in my laptop and do the move...

I don't have those, I have heard of BartPE, but never heard of Windows Ultimate Boot CD - it that a Vista thing (I have XP)

Thanks for some insight... at least I have some ideas now. But how come TI reconstructed the file system like that? And how come TI doesn't allow some way to fix it inside it's programming?

 

As long as you have the c: drive image backup, it CAN be restored every time.

Download the free "boot corrector" (Paragon Rescue Kit 9.0 Express) and use that to bootup your computer, in it it has the ability to check your boot.ini file. Make a copy of it and let us see what it reads. We can probably show you what corrections to make.

Also check your drive letters that they correspond to the correct partition.

A backup of a "bootable partition" will always be "bootable" when restored, most problems will be easy to fix.


https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=237785

 

If I understand one of your comments in a previous post correctly, it appears that you do not have an image of the C: partition available, only a set of folders/files that were backed up from the C: partition.

Other comments suggest that you may not understand the system recovery process, pardon me if that is not correct, but that is how it appears from the information you have provided up to this point.

To do a system restore (OS and applications) you must have an image of the C: partition, you can't just copy a bunch of folders. So if all you have are the folders/files, you're going to have to re-install XP and all your applications from the original disks.

After doing that, then its possible to copy the folders/files you have backed up back onto the C: partition once you have an OS running.

If you want to be able to restore your system in the future, you must backup the complete C: partition image, not just folders/files.

 

I tried "Paragon Rescue Kit 9.0 Express". It loads all the way through to the menu that has "copy files". The progress bars goes about 1/2 way and locks up.

And Dwalby, most everything you've guessed above is correct. I have no clue, no images, no CDs. I DO have a question, can I load XP from another computer's install CDs, then once I get the operating system running copy over those files with the backup set? I guess not, the system wouldn't let me over write itself while in use... Seems, I still don't have a clue...

I certainly did not understand "If you want to be able to restore your system in the future, you must backup the complete C: partition image, not just folders/files." until way too late...

 

Sorry to hear that, unfortunately we often learn the hard way after its too late. But I hope that you have all your important data/photo files saved in your folder backup set, so you didn't lose anything important.

If you reinstall XP from disks then you will be able to restore your OWN data files back to the C: drive, but you most likely won't be able to restore any applications because you won't be able to restore the registry values properly. You'll have to reinstall all your applications from disks as well. But assuming you have the disks available, that's do-able, its just a lot of additional work.

The advice given most often here is to not only do the C: partition imaging, but make sure you can actually do a restore successfully as well. Then when you need to do it you can feel confident that it will go smoothly.

 

Not all is lost, I did run across the backup disks I had to make when I first started the laptop years ago.

That, I thought was a given - "actually do a restore successfully" - when needed. How would ANYONE know without actually trying to do a restore?

The reason I didn't do partition imaging was because my hidden partition isn't as big as the C: partition. I thought both had to be the same size? Which brings me back to my original question, why does TI not put the files back where it got them from? As I noted above, the problem existed years ago, and why is it not fixed by now?

As a side note, hal.dll has a file lenght of 0. I had validated that backup at least 4 different times before I proceeded. Is the software unreliable?

I was really impressed with the concept and hidden partition. It is a real let down since it doesn't work.

 

Crane Mann,
Check line 2 of my signature below. These are for the prior versions but the concepts are basically the same. These will help you to understand more of what you need to do.

 

I found some help -
http://www.halescomputerservice.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=651

Not that any of my problems were caused by TI nor could TI help me out of my jam. But I AM out of that jam. However, my goal is still the same. I want to reformat C: from FAT32 to NTFS. Can TI help me accomplish this goal? Or do I have to do an image copy - which also copies FAT32? (which is why I did file & folder type of backup)

Is there a solution to this?

 

XP comes with a built in converter utility.

First you need to open a command window, if you don't have a shortcut on your desktop or start menu labelled Command Prompt
, press the Windows Start button + R key and in the Run box that appears type in CMD. A command prompt box will now pop up.

Type into this box convert c: /fs:ntfs /v, and then press the enter key.

I've assumed it is your C: drive that needs converting, if it is a different drive letter just change the c: to whatever drive letter you need. The /v, just gives you pretty messages as it works.

Colin

 

Thank you very much! I should have known that. I now have it up and running. Thanks to all of you who have help me!

Just for your info, Acer has yet to do anything except send me a ref number. Now I no longer need their help.

Again thank all of you!

 

Don't give up yet because the basic backup imaging engine works.

Some of the other features Acronis offers may be more or less reliable depending on your particular system. Considering the huge variety of systems out there that's not all that surprising, but it represents a potential risk. The more you ask the tool to do, the higher the chance something might go wrong. And if you browse this forum you'll see there's a lot of ways for things to go wrong. That's why I only do manual full backups, its the simplest way to use the tool, therefore the most reliable.

Hopefully after you get your OS restored you can copy some of the data files back from your Acronis backup. Then reconsider at that time how you want to utilize the tool. You can do simple file copies any number of ways for free, so that's not really the primary value Acronis brings to the party. Its true value is allowing you to roll back your system state to remove a problem, which is invaluable under certain conditions.

 

I havn't given up. Since I had to go back to scratch, I figured now would be the time to play - can't hurt anything. Maybe learn exactly how this thing actually works, what can be counted on, and what can't...

One thing I have noticed since I had to start over, and re-download all the updates - somewhere one of the updates of windows is causing my laptop to lockup... hummm - that's obviously either a windows thing or manufactor...

But thanks for your encouragement...

 

The last time I had to do that I didn't download everything all at once. I let the auto-update utility tell me what things to do incrementally. If you're already using the incremental method, then I don't have any other advice besides start over and try again. If you downloaded everything at once and tried to install it all in one big operation, then you might try again using the incremental approach.

The incremental approach also allows you to take an image at each intermediate point, then if something goes wrong in the next step you can recover back to the last working version and try again from there.

 

Actually you're on to something there... Because as windows did it's update (100s and 100s with reboots) I started running into problems - had I done incremental backups after each re-boot, I wouldn't have had to go ALL the way back... Thanks for making the obvious plainer to see... lol

In the end, I found out I had a bad hard drive, tho I had a backup (hidden partition), it was on the same drive and I STILL LOST EVERYTHING... boohoohoo... it is what it is...

In any case, I really did learn something... Thanks everyone for your advice, suggestions, and help!

 

Crane Mann,
Experience is our best teacher. Now you know why so many of us use several methods for our backups so if one method fails, we always have plan B+C+D. Storing your some of your backups on the same disk is much easier but for safety's sake, you need additional alternate storage locations. Some use a combination of other internal disks + external disks or home networks,--even additionally on DVD. I have used TI 9-9-10-11-2009 and it has always proved beneficial.

You might be interested in this post:
This is one type of external storage.BlacX
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1419603&postcount=26