TI11 - corrupted registry hive files on restore

It is related to "Shell32.dll (USB Errors)" topic here https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=202268 I've tried to reply to the thread but my reply somehow didn't appear.

I did my first restore (full partition and MBR) using TI 11 version and found this error as well. I must say this is extremly scary. I always verify backup image after backup. It did not indicate any errors.

I did many backup/restores with TI 9 and never had any problems. I use only bootable CDs. My thought was that TrueImage is file-based backup software. Registry hive files are just ordinary binary files like other files. If such file(s) can be corrupted on restore other might be corrupted as well ? The proposed "fix" does not fix it at all because there might be another 1000 corrupted files or 100000 registry entries. You just don't know about them yet.

Is there magic inside that registry hive files are processed/compressed a special way so the bug is specific to them for sure ? Could you please confirm it ?

For now I have to revert back to version 9.

 

"My thought was that TrueImage is file-based backup software."
I can't help with your problem, but when creating an image TI does sector based backups, not file based.

 

Ok, there is sector-by-sector backup option as well. In case of sector based backup, it is also strange that some registry keys get corrupted when they are only sectors on disk like other files. The backup software shouldn't have any knowledge what the content of files (composed from sectors) means. There must be a more "magic" inside which causes the bug.

 

I don't think this is a registry error, per se, but a violation of protocal for settings up drives at boot time. In any event, af all the things that ATI11 does wrongly, this thing with the incorrect termination of "name strings" of Generic Drives is probably the least important. A bit of a nuisance to be sure but certainly not a critical fault. ATI11 does indeed have critical faults but this is more a pimple than a bleeder. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't corrected in the next version. I say version because, with only 2 - 3 months to go until the likely annual release of a new version, I don't see a new build of ATI11 coming out nor the long ago promised additional build of ATI10.

 

I can not agree. TI is supposed to deliver exact files content of the drive in backup/restore sequence (assuming it is partition and MBR restore, not individual files only). If there was an "incorrect" value in the registry before the backup (but it worked all the time), there supposed to be the same "incorrect" value after the restore. It is just binary files. TI is not suppose to modify or "correct" them.

Again, I use bootable CD only. I do shutdown of the operating system, start machine, boot directly from CD, backup, exit TI, power off. The same for restore. No USB device is connected/disconnected while the operating system is started or running. There must be the same exact content of all files in the partition byte-by-byte after the restore. So this is serious bug because it has modified registry file content. How can I be sure it hasn't corrupt other files ?

A "Verify partition" function would find a difference after the restore I guess.

 

There is an infinite list of other things that conceivably could go wrong. If you want proof that each of those things won't happen, well, it's like asking for a disproof of an infinite number of possibilities. No techique can handle that. As Karl Popper might say, scientific methods msut be finite to be practical.

ON the more practical, less philosophical side -- as far as confidence, you only have however much you have. But what we know about this particular problem is that it's essentially a nuisance but harmless. You can even safely remove hardware despite the error message. And it's easy to fix by the methods described in the threads on this bug.

To be sure, it's a bug and shouldn't be there, and to be sure, ATI11 has some serious bugs. You need to assess the risks and harms of each one on it's own merit. This one is innocuous except for that darned nuisance error message. It's about as hazardous as the ATI yellow ribbon warning that proclaims that you "Have no backup" (because no scheduled backups have been run).

Some of the critical probs with ATI11 are schedule tasks that don't run; file-by-file backups that hang; and the inability on some platforms for the BootCD to see all the drives and therefore not be able to restore (something which , to some degree, affects all backup imaging software that use linux for a restore environment -- and that's almost all of them). If you want to get on Acronis's case about quality control, I suggest thre would be more benefit by taking a hammer to those nails.

 

Hello Puppy36,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Please be aware that after restoring Acronis True Image 11 Home creates new volume entries for the restored drive in Windows registry. This is done to avoid additional reboot after restore: since the restored drive has different Disk ID, Windows would reinstall it and require reboot.

The problem you encountered occurs because the new volume entry (it's located in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\STORAGE\Volume\DeviceDesc registry key) is improperly created without closing the entry (by adding NULL character at the end). It can be corrected by opening the respective key via Windows regedit tool, choosing "edit" and saving. The regedit tool will add NULL string terminator automatically.

Please notice that if you want to restore the data without any changes made at all, you can choose the "Sector-by-sector restoration of disks or partitions" mode. Please see chapter 6 "Restoring the backup data" of Acronis True Image 11 Home User's Guide for details.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Thanks for clarification. I'm aware of "sector-by-sector" backup but such backups are quite large. Does it mean that TI 9 does not perform the registry modification after the restore ? I have never had any problem with it (using the bootable CD).

 

Prior versions of ATI simply terminated the string correctly.

 

Hello Puppy36,

Please notice that Acronis True Image 11 Home allows sector by sector restore mode even if the image was created in normal mode.

As noted by shieber, the lack of NULL terminator with current builds of Acronis True Image 11 Home is a mistake. The fix most likely will be included into the next build of Acronis True Image. We are sorry, but the exact time frame isn't defined yet.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov