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Support? Hardly

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I've been using ATI for years at work to image customer machines and have never had a problem. Recently purchased ATI 2010 on a Black Friday sale at newegg for my home machine. Installed with no problems but when I tried to do a backup on my Win7 Pro x64 machine I ran into the problems that everyone on the forums are talking about. Machine totally hangs.

"No big deal" I thought to myself, I saw somewhere in the paperwork about a 30day free installation support. I figured I would just head on over to the website, register my product and chat with someone at Acronis to rectify the issue. Wrong. According to their records when I login to my account my free installation support ended August 28,2009. WHAT? I just bought the software, and registered the license key.

This support website is a total joke. There's no contact information anywhere. I saw someone mention a "Live Chat" option in the forums, but I can't find it for the life of me.

I'm wondering if anyone here knows of a way to contact them without using the PayPerScrewup option. I understand that software has bugs and that things go wrong. That's why it's a great idea to have 30 day support. But it seems very underhanded that I buy the software, it doesn't work and mysteriously my installation support ended 4 months ago.

Anyone have any ideas?

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Brandon wrote:
Anyone have any ideas?

Yes, don't waste more time and switch to Paragon DriveBackup, Norton Ghost, DriveImage XML or any other Imaging software. Everything will be better than ATI2010...

It might be my imagination, but I think that I recall a posting that said there was an update issued for Win 7,

If you installed the 2010 on the CD, uninstall, and get the update from Acronis.

I NEVER install stuff from retail CDs, always download the latest update,

Yeah, the CD updated from the internet and gave me version 6029. Then I came to the forums and tried the 6053(?) version. Neither worked.

I also tried the SnapAPI update someone had posted, but once I installed that with the newest version, Acronis wouldn't even load.

Check reply #153 in this thread: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/5475?page=3#comment-12306

*Edit* Thanks, Colin!

Mark , it's post 153!

Hello all,

Brandon, please accept my sincere apologies for the inconvenience you experienced with our product. Since you have purchased a boxed version, it looks like it was in store for some time, that's why you received a message about expired support. Do not worry, I will assist you with the issue.

We have already received several conformations that special version of SnapAPI fixes the issue with the backups hang in Acronis True Image Home 2010 under Windows 7. We're not able to post it for a public access, since it can be incompatible with some previous product versions. And in each case we should figure out the situation clearly before give it for fixing.

So could you please describe the situation in more details? Could you please give me the exact name of SnapAPI file you installed so I can check if this is a correct one? 

Howard, you're right - we have several large threads related to this issue. Good recommendation, since when you purchase a boxed version in a store - it may contain some old build of the product, and it's always recommended to keep the software up to date. We have the article with the similar description.

Actually, Mark has already linked to the thread related to the issue. Thanks!

We are looking forward to hearing back from you at your earliest convenience.

Thank you.

Thanks everyone for the replies!

So this is my current situation. I got the link for the latest SnapAPI driver. I uninstalled all versions of ATI. I re-installed the latest build (6053) and then ran the SnapAPI setup. The drivers didn't ask for a reboot, so I tried to run ATI. It told me that I needed to reboot. After rebooting ATI won't load at all.

I get a "failed to initialize computer" error. I attached the screenshot.

Am I missing something?

Attachment Size
12385-86374.JPG 23.92 KB

**UPDATE**
I actually didn't uninstall everything, so I went through the whole process again and TADA I could do a backup without locking up my machine.

Thanks everyone for the help!

Hello Brandon,

In this situation the cause is that snapapi.dll component was not updated (rewritten) for some reason. Let's do the following to resolve the issue: 

1. Verify that the snapapi in: C:\windows\system32\ “snapapi.dll” is old (right click > properties > Version); this number should be less than 507 (e.g. 499)

2. Copy:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\SnapAPI\  “snapapi.dll” (507)
on top of:
C:\windows\system32\ “snapapi.dll” 

3. Run the product

This should help to resolve the issue.

Additionally to this, you are welcome to ask me any other questions concerning Acronis, and I will assist you further.

Regards,