Acronis 2014 premium licence for 3 PCs not working
I had Acronis 7 for my previous PC and I purchased the 2013 version for my Toshiba laptop quad core Windows 8 machine and then was offered a free upgrade to 2014 and for a little extra was also offered a three PC licence as an upgrade which I also took up.
I had already backed my computer with the 2013 product so I didn't bother messing around with it too much.
I have put a lot of data on my computer so I thought now that I have it running as I want I would take an image of the hard drive......well that failed, It had a record of the old back up, which I had deleted in anticipation of needing the space to put a complete back up on the same disk.
There had ben a load of critical updates and rubbish you get from windows so I thought I would try to repair the installation.....well though it said it repaired it that failed it just sat there and looked at me.
I then went for a reinstall.....guess... that failed as well, though it asked for serial numbers of both the 2014 and the upgrade and acknowledged them both with a green tick not install again.
I can do a Norton back up or a windows backup but that is not why I shelled out the money to buy Acronis.
To rub salt into the wound Acronis advise me when I ask for support for their product online that I need to buy support credits.......Well if they insist on that they have lost me and all the people I know forever.
Thanks Bob, Windows8, 64bit if that makes any difference, when you click to start the backup it just does nothing. Since posting I downloaded the latest Acronis software and managed to install it however that led to more problems.
I performed a backup and then used the tools to mount the image. The image was mounted as four separate partitions (because in Windows 8 there are 4 partitions). Unfortunately the unmount does not work, when you read the how to, it says that if you restart the computer it will automatically unmount the image however after a reboot and leaving the USB3 drive off the computer for the reboot the image record remains in explorer so I used the right context menu to unmount them. They eventually unmounted individually in a very ugly fashion showing error shields containing no information with what looked like serial number spaces with blanks. This process took my USB drive out of explorer in that it was mounted and could be seen when using the disk management tools in windows but when you click on Computer in explorer only the C drive was visible. I tried a reboot in the hope that it would restore the standard behaviour but no it did not. Fortunately I had the good sense to create a restore point before embarking on this exercise so I was able to restore my computer to the earlier configuration and it all worked fine except of course for Acronis. So at this point I have uninstalled it from my laptop until I can get more information on how to get it to work properly. Acronis 7 just worked perfectly unfortunately after windows XP it did not work and certainly not with Windows8.
I look forward to your comments. Just to assist you in your analysis of the problem, The computer is a Toshiba with quad core i7 and 16gig ram with the usual stuff Nvidia graphics with 2gig on board. Windows 8, with start8 to get rid of Microsoft's telephone front end and return it to the standard menu system and start bar. The Virus checker is Norton 360 (could be the fly in the ointment as the icon disappears when Acronis is started.) I tried disabling it but this makes no difference to the outcome.
Thanks in anticipation of your assistance.
I see a couple of things here. First, I understand that the instructions tell you that a reboot would unmount the backup images but why did you decide to disconnect the drive from the system when you rebooted? I am sure that his really confused the app when it restarted expecting to have the disk once again available and could not find it! Next you decided to unmount images on a drive that now doesn't exist because you removed it from the system. That explains the error messages and the slow to respond to the unmount request.
These actions caused the rest of your problems as well I'm afraid. It is a very good thing you had a recent restore point to go back to.
When you uninstalled the app did you run the cleanup utility as well?
If you decide to reinstall the app first make sure that the previous installs are completely removed. After that check in your bios which I suspect may be UEFI and see if secure boot is enabled. If it is disable it, you can enable it again after the installation. Most definately disable Norton before you install as well and any other virus apps that are on your machine.
Maybe with that and some luck you can achieve a successful install.
Thanks Bob,
It appears that there is some confusion in what I posted. The problem was firstly that I created an image that actually mounted using the tools menu. So far this is what was supposed to happen. The problem was that using the same tools menu the image would not unmount. The instructions say that if you reboot then the image will no longer appear in explorer so with the shut down that I performed and the removal of the drive should make no difference, why would the system be looking for a drive when normally this is a valid way to remove a USB drive. We and I assume everyone who uses Windows has shutdown a computer has removed a USB drive and not had the system looking for that drive on a reboot. Since removing the Acronis software I tested your theory several times and shut down the computer with the USB drive attached, then removed it and then restarted the computer and the system does not advise that the drive is mounted so you have me very confused here,
The reboot, showing the Acronis image still mounted in explorer, though the drive was not mounted was a system corruption and should not have happened. I did carry out a step that I did not include in my report to you only because I thought it irrelevant and did not want to be too wordy, I actually remounted the drive but the drive did not appear in explorer and then I removed it and went through the unmount via the context menu and wound up with all the errors and the need to restore the computer to an earlier time.
I presume that with the restored system Acronis in its unstable state would be removed and I would wind up with the broken version of Acronis so the uninstall I have performed would have removed the original version, otherwise the later install of the new version would not have worked and I would not have wound up with an image to mount.
The UEFI secure boot may be a problem as and I would agree Norton 360 could be an issue however you really cannot disconnect Norton fully and so I am loath to try anything at this point that might wreck my computer. I am wondering if I load The Acronis software on another computer (I have a three computer premium licence.) can I clone this drive via a network connection and then if that goes OK I can mess around with the laptop directly at least I will have a recovery available.
Sorry to be a pain but I have seen poorly written software (Like Windows it self) wreck computers before and had to rescue drives by removing it from sys32 and various places and I don't want to start that all over again.
Please let me know what you think.