Try and Decide problem

Try and Decide quit during the restore and now Vista will not boot. It gets to the point of Acronis Loader and jumps back to the boot screen. Acronis recovery disks will not work either. Was not able to repair with a Vista disk. The disk letters (ie c are different so Vista can not find the recovery data.

Any help will be appreciated,

Bill

 

What version and build of TI are you using?

What happens when you try to use the TI CD (recovery disc)?

Do you have a backup image taken before trying T&D?

The drive letters being different when the Vista DVD boots is not that uncommon. What letters are being assigned?

 

Using TI '11' - Recovery disk is used (Light on) up to running Acronis Boot Loader (don't remember exact name) and then the system goes back to the boot screen like it does when the recovery disk is not used. I do have a backup image with several incremental images.

I do not remember all of the drive letters. I have a printer with card slots that are assigned letters and two external drives. Vista used 'x' for its drive letter. I used the Vista install disk to get a command prompt to see what the disk letters were assigned to. "C" is correct and it looks like all of the data is intact. There does not seem to be any Restore Point files - if I am looking at the correct folder. I know there should be unless they were deleted by the system since the computer was off for several days while we were away.

The factory image partition is skipped. And D: is assigned to an external disk Partition. E: is the second partition on the external disk.

F: is the factory partition. Normally D:

G: is the dvd reader/writer. Normally E:

H: through K: are the printer card slots. I assume since they are not ready when I try to go to them.

L: is first partition of the second external disk. M: is the second partition and contains my backup images. I can;t remember what letter it is normally.

N: and O: are two partitions on the second external disk I had reserved for backups for the laptop I am using and my wife's desktop computer that is not active now. Neither of these drives are used.

I don't know what P: is - systems says not ready when I try to go to it and Q: is not found so P: must be the last disk letter.

I just tried the Vista repair in the hopes it could bring the system back. The results start with:

Session Details
System Disk = \Device\harddisk0
Windows directory = C:\Windows
AutoChk Run = 0
Number of root causes = 1

Then it lists several tests and indicates they are successful. Then:

Root cause found:
..............................
Boot status indicates that the OS booted successfully.


Hope this give you enough to go on to let me get back in operation.

Many Thanks,

Bill

 

When you boot the computer normally (no CD in the drive), you get an Acronis... message. Is that correct? And then the computer just reboots.

Did you have the ASRM activated?

When you say "Try and Decide quit during the restore", what do you mean? T&D in TI 11 won't survive a reboot. Were you applying the changes made during a T&D session and it just locked up? If so, there may be corruption on the drive.

Have you tried doing an MBR repair using the Vista DVD? Boot to the Vista DVD, select the Repair Mode, cancel any automatic repairs, start the Command Prompt and run the following command (<ENTER> means to press the ENTER key):

Code:

bootrec /fixmbr <ENTER>

This should remove any Acronis code from the MBR. If you still get an Acronis... message when you boot, it's hooked in somewhere else.

How current are your backup images?

Can you boot into TI successfully from the TI CD? It sounds like that isn't even starting correctly. Do you get the Acronis menu where you can select TI Full Mode, etc.?

 

MudCrab you are a genius. Fixing the Master Boot Record got me back online. I had just made a copy of the ISO MBR file on the Read this First Post, but was hesitant to use it - worrying about making a bigger mess. Anyway I need to get Acronis back so I will answer your questions and maybe you can give me the steps to get fully back.

Yes, the system got to displaying the first part of the Acronis message but not the selections and then went back to the boot screen.

I don't know what ASRM is so I don't guess I had it activated.

Try and Decide locked up during the process of retaining the information entered during the Try phase. I got an error message stating it was stopped (I think that was what it said). Acronis shut down so I restarted it and went back to the Try and Decide screen pushed the stop button and selected to save info again and the system looked like it was fixing the problem but then it did not seem that anything was happening except for the progress bar being on the screen. The whole system finally locked up and had to be restarted. That was when I found I could not boot back into the system.

As stated above, the MBR fix worked.

My back up was current.

I did not try to boot from the TI disk. I am not sure I have one. I believe I downloaded the program. I tried my latest TI recovery disk as stated in the previous post. I do not have a rescue disk.

Now what do I need to do to get Acronis back working?

Thanks again,

Bill

 

That's good.

The ASRM is the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. If you have created a Secure Zone (SZ) and activated the ASRM, you should get the "Press F11..." prompt on the screen for a few seconds when you boot the computer. Pressing F11 will load the Acronis menu where you can start TI or continue booting into Windows.

That explains what happened much better. Thank you.

Have you run a chkdsk /f on the Windows drive? There may be corruption because of the lock-up.

Also, have you checked if none/some/all of the changes made during the T&D session actually got applied?

Good. However, if you can't boot to the TI CD to do a restore, it won't help for doing a partition restore.

The "rescue cd", "recovery disc", etc., are all the same thing. The Media Builder program is installed with TI and is accessible from the Acronis menu and also from the Tools menu in TI. This will create a TI CD. From your posts, it's kind of hard to tell what you actually tried.

If this CD won't boot correctly on your computer, a solution needs to be found or you won't be able to do any restores.

On some computers, the default loader on the CD won't work. In those cases, an alternate loader version needs to be obtained from Acronis Support.

 

I did establish a secure zone, but I not sure if I activated ASRM. I assume I did since I was getting the prompt to press f11. That was where the system would stop and go back to the boot screen. I was not putting backups in the secure zone. I am putting them on a external disk. Should I be using the secure zone. It seems to me if the disk blows the secure zone won't be accessible either so the backups are gone? I ran chkdsk from the command prompt while I could not boot up and ran it just now (not if /f mode) and it found no errors.

I agree my backups were only useful if I reinstalled the OS and then they could be used to rebuild the files.

The program (Outlook) I was looking at was partially restored but would have to be reinstalled. Not a problem. The disk assignments seem correct as before. I lost some of my customization of programs but that may not be caused by this problem.

I reactivated the ASRM and made a new recovery disk. I will check it to see if the system will boot from it later today. If it does not I will contact support.

Is this all I need to do to have Acronis back up running? My backup schedule is still indicated and the previous backups are listed. Is there anything else you suggest me checking?

Thanks for all of your help,

Bill

 

Ckeck if the TI CD will work properly (as you plan to).

Keep your current backups for a while, at least. Sometimes a problem won't show up until some time has passed.

I would recommend that you continue saving your backups in a location other than the SZ.