Vista and Acronis - hangs when I type

Hi, all!

After a couple of years of reliable use of Acronis with WinXP, I am now having a very frustrating problem with Acronis and Vista.

This may have started with Vista SP1 ... (not 100% sure, but I think so)

What happens is that I start Acronis True Image Home (10 or 11, same problem!), follow the Backup wizard to the backup path dialog, and then as soon as I type into the dialog to name my output archive, the dialog stops accepting my characters and shortly after that Acronis "white-screens" (goes non-responsive) and I have no choice but to kill the Acronis process.

Bottom line, I can't do my backups and my computing is now at risk.

I've completely uninstalled and re-installed Acronis, using both v10 and v11, but to no avail.

The machine is a personal custom-build, GigaByte mobo, fully legit Vista home premium.

Has anybody else seen this problem?

Can anyone even suggest a rational reason how this could happen (I'm sure stumped!).

Did Vista SP1 break Acronis?

Thanks to anyone who can provide info or most especially a fix!

 

I had a similar problem a few months ago. It turned out that there was a very large Zip file in the same folder as the .tib(s). I don't know if any large file will cause the problem, or any Zip file will, but try making sure that the folder where you want to put your backups is empty. This happened under XP SP2 and I haven't tried it under Vista; I just avoid putting Zip files in the same folder as the .tibs.

 

PeterR - Thanks for your reply! I will keep your comments in mind during future experiments. Keeping .zip files out of the destination folder will not be a problem, but as for "large" files, the .tib files themselves will be there.

Will it be the case that a new .tib file cannot be written to the same directory where a previous one has been written? This would be pretty onerous, and certainly did not used to be the case. What changed?

I will report back when I have new information, but meanwhile I'm still hopeful that someone out there knows more about this and can post further info.

 

Having other .tib files in the folder didn't seem to be a problem, no matter their size. But a big Zip was a killer. In the past, I would often create a zip of the "Documents and Settings" folder tree after running a monthly ATI backup. I didn't quite trust ATI enough to depend on it alone. But if I put them into the same folder as the .tibs, then I would have the problem you are having: you couldn't enter text into the ATI dialog box where you name your backup. Put the cursor in there, hit a key, and ATI would lock.

The funny thing is that I had some back and forth with Acronis, and once I discovered the problem and reported it to them they were able to duplicate it. This was months ago, I think well before version 11, so I am suprised it hasn't been fixed. I solved my problem by keeping my .zips out of the folder with my .tibs.

 

I can confirm that SP1 did not break ATI as I still use it to do image backups.

However, I did notice that in Vista, it can appear to hang while checking all the partitions. Since it does this in a panel partly obscured, it looks like the app is not responding while, in fact, it is waiting for its partition scanning to stop before allowing you to proceed.

Next time you launch it, watch the Scanning panel to ensure that it finishes.

I've noticed that the scan "time" seems to become very long at times.

 

Hello sj1,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Please make sure you use the latest build of the respective version of Acronis True Image. To get access to updates you should first register your software.

If the latest build doesn't solve the problem, please download the latest version of Acronis drivers and install it with disabled logging.

Please also notice that it can be that Acronis True Image is taking a long time to analyze partitions, as pointed by Mark_Phelps. Please try waiting longer and see it the program proceeds.

If it does, most likely the problem is caused by a conflict with Distributed Link Tracking Windows service. Please disable it and see if it solves the problem. It can be disabled the following way:
- Click on the Start (Vista logo) button and type "services";
- Click on "services" from the menu;
- Click "Continue" when the UAC prompt appears;
- In the list of services shown, find "Distributed Link Tracking Client" and double-click on it;
- Click the "Stop" button to stop the service;
- From the drop-down list choose "Disabled";
- Click "OK" and close the list of Services.

Please see this thread for more information.

If that's not the case, or disabling the service doesn't have any effect, please collect some information to let us investigate the issue thoroughly:

- Reinstall Acronis drivers with enabled logging;
- Reproduce the issue and collect the log file without closing any application windows (including the error message windows if there are any). The log file will be created at C:\ . The name of the log file will be snapapi [date-time].log

Please create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. To expedite the resolution we recommend you to use our Live Chat service after that. We will do our best to investigate the problem and provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov