OSS "freezes" on boot selector screen

Discussion in 'Acronis Disk Director Suite' started by clh, Oct 9, 2008.

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  1. clh

    clh Registered Member

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    I had posted before about trying to set up dual-boot between Vista and XP using OSS and OSS not detecting either the Vista or XP OS partitions. MudCrab was very helpful in getting that working. That was on a test PC just to make sure I knew what I was doing.

    I'm not working on the real PC and I have 2 new problems.

    I got DD and OSS installed okay and sees the Vista partition I had installed already, but when I reboot the computer and the OSS selector screen loads up it sits at the "Processing, please wait..." screen for a full 30 seconds, then displays the OS selector, but even on that screen it "freezes" up. It's totally frozen. I can click around and press arrow keys like I was trying move around the menus and nothing happens. All of a sudden the menus in the OS Selector screen start flashing like all of the mouse clicks or arrow key movements I had done, for just half a second or a second, then it freezes again. Then it keeps doing the same thing. The only way I can boot at all is to hover the mouse over the Vista OS entry and click a couple times, then the next time it "unfreezes" it will pick up my mouse clicks and boot.

    I'm not sure if the 2nd problem may be related to whatever's causing the first problem or not. I made a DD Rescue Boot CD. If I boot from that CD and try to run Disk Director Full version, it tries to load for a couple minutes then comes back and says it can't find any hard disks. If I try to run DD Safe Version from the boot CD it runs fine.

    Any ideas?

    Oh, this is a brand new clean install of Vista that was installed from a retail CD-ROM onto a completely blank hard drive. I even let Vista's install routine partition and format the drive (I used the Advanced function in Vista setup to tell it how big of a partition to create, but what I'm saying is that I had not created the partition myself before starting the Vista install CD). Then I install DD10 and OSS. It installed okay and as I said above, OSS did find my Vista OS and that's available on the menu to boot from, but I have the above issues. (The intention is to then install XP onto it's own partition, but I want to make sure this is working before I go through the trouble to install XP.)

    Thank you!
     
  2. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    During that time, are there repetative sounds from the hard drive(s) or is everything quiet?

    Are there any media card readers attached to the computer?

    Have you tried disabling CD-ROM support?

    Are you using a USB mouse/keyboard? If so, is the Legacy USB option enabled in the BIOS?

    The Full Mode version probably doesn't have the necessary Linux drivers for your computer. The Safe Mode version accesses the drives through the computer's BIOS.

    Is there any delay in starting the Safe Mode version of DD (any delay scanning your partitions on startup, etc.)?

    What motherboard/chipset are you using?

    I think Acronis has a newer build of DD, but you'll need to contact them to get it as it wasn't released. I don't know if it includes a newer build of OSS or not.
     
  3. clh

    clh Registered Member

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    Thanks for the help again MudCrab, I greatly appreciate it!

    There are no media card readers attached, but there is a floppy drive attached. I did notice that the light on the floppy drive lit up the whole time the OSS was sitting at the "Please wait screen", but I tried disabling and unplugging the floppy and it didn't help. Also, the test PC had a floppy and didn't have this problem (completely different system though).

    I'm not sure what you mean by disabling CD-ROM support. Can you clarify? (No I didn't try that so far but if you can tell me what you mean I can try it.)


    Currently USB mouse but PS/2 keyboard, though eventually it will be USB on both keyboard and mouse when I get things working (wireless keyboard and mouse where the receiver plugs in via USB, but that's still on my old computer for now). Legacy USB is enabled in BIOS. Should I try disabling it? (Though again, I think, but not 100% sure, it was also enabled on the test PC.)


    Safe Mode DD appears to pretty much start right up.

    It's a Gigabyte EP45-DS3R motherboard which uses the P45 chipset. I do have "Native" mode enabled for SATA but I do not have AHCI or RAID enabled.
     
  4. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    You're welcome.

    By disabling, do you mean you disabled the floppy controller in the BIOS? If not, try that.

    For media card readers, that includes any printers with media slots. Also disconnect any flashdrives, USB drives, iPODS, etc. (if connected).

    There is an option in OSS to disable CD-ROM support. This prevents it from looking for CD/DVD drives when it boots. You can find it in Tools >> Options >> Startup Options >> Do not load CD-ROM drivers.

    I don't think that should make a difference with this problem, but you can try it if you want.

    DD's Safe Mode pretty much uses the same access method as OSS. Since DD can start quickly, the problem is OSS doing something differently.

    You might try switching to AHCI mode.
     
  5. clh

    clh Registered Member

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    You're a genius! Thanks again!!

    No, I had not disabled in the BIOS. I had just disconnected the data cable from the floppy drive. I just now tried disabling in BIOS too but that didn't make a difference.


    Absolutely nothing connected. This is a brand new computer setup. I haven't even installed any software or drivers on it yet beyond the bare minimum graphics and sound drivers and OSS. No printers, nothing.


    Actually this solved it (but keep reading, as so did something else)!


    This also solved it!!

    So I could either disable the CD-ROM drivers in OSS or enable AHCI mode. I prefer not to use AHCI mode but I can live without the CD-ROM ability in OSS so that's what I'll opt for. I don't quite understand why. The test PC I tried this on was an SATA and it didn't have any issues. It didn't even support AHCI. But at least it seems I have this working now on the new PC.


    On a side note, I also found out that disabling Native mode on the SATA allowed the DD full version to run from the rescue boot CD. As I understand it the main difference is that in Native mode it allows the SATA controller to share an IRQ, but when Native mode is disabled it forces the SATA controller to use a dedicated hardware IRQ like the old IDE controllers did.

    But are there any additional features in the "full" version from the boot CD compared to the Safe mode version? What's the difference? They looked the same to me with a cursory look over (once I got the full version to run after disabling native mode). Any big reason not to just use the Safe Mode version (should I need to in the future)?

    Thanks again for all your help!
     
  6. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    There is no functional difference between the Full and Safe Mode versions. The main difference is that the Full Mode version can be much faster when moving large amounts of data or allow better access to USB drives. The Safe Mode version can access most USB devices that show up in the BIOS and for general functions that don't require large amounts of data to be moved, it can be faster because it usually boots faster. When working with internal drives, Safe Mode can sometimes be just as fast as the Full Mode version. I usually use the Safe Mode version because it boots much faster.

    Did the test PC use a different chipset?

    Is the CD/DVD drive an IDE or SATA drive?
     
  7. clh

    clh Registered Member

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    Ah, well that's good to know. I guess I know I can use safe mode most of the time and if I needed to move a large partition I could always disable Native mode on the SATA just long enough for me to run the full version and then disable Native mode again.


    Yes, definitely different chipset. They are both Intel chipsets. The new PC is the P45 chipset with the ICHR10 (I think that's it, with a Core 2 Quad CPU). I'm not sure the chipset of the old PC but I know it's Intel (with a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz CPU, the test PC is about 3 years old).

    The CD drive is a standard IDE drive, but it was on the test PC too. Although on the new PC with the problem, I forgot to mention before, I did try disabling the onboard IDE port that the CD drive is plugged into and that did not help. Still had to disable the CD-ROM drivers in OSS. Which is just as well because I'm not going to go out and buy a new SATA CD drive (it's a dual layer DVD burer drive actually) just to support OSS even if disabling the onboard IDE had worked.
     
  8. pestoking

    pestoking Registered Member

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    I believe the problem is the new P45 motherboard. A documented issue with TrueImage 11 was that the flavor of Linux deployed was not compatible with the P45. The result was the program worked fine under Windows, but under reboot to the Linux interface, most things didn't work. It sounds like the same problem exists with DD v10. OSS and DD work fine under Windows, but when you boot to the selector's Linux shell, nothing works. I have a P45 mobo and True Image 11 would not fully work. Just tested OSS and am experiencing same issues described by the original poster. The "fix" probably is going to have to be a new version of DD with an updated implementation of the Linux shell for running the OSS. The Linux shell was updated for True Image 2009 (v. 12?), which works fine with my P45-based mobo.
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2008
  9. Dob

    Dob Registered Member

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    Hi I think I have the same problem.

    In an attempt to overcome a problem with an external hard drive a friend loaded ADD onto my laptop. The programme turned out to be in German so we didn't attempt to use it.
    Problem now when I try to boot up the computer frreezes and I get the message - Acronis Loader wird gestartet...

    flashed up repeatedly until the processor overheats and the machine shuts down.

    Pressing cntl alt delete or F2 gets me as far as the pre-boot screen but nothing there works and it jumps back to the German message...

    HELP... or should that be 'Hilfe' !

    The laptop is a Toshiba running Windows XP.
    Is there any way I can by-pass this programe, get into windows and delete the thing..?
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2008
  10. clh

    clh Registered Member

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    If you have your Windows XP OS CD that hopefully came with the laptop, boot from it and select the Repair option, then select the option to repair the boot.
     
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