Fix for "operations are in progress" during PC shutdown in Win Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1

Karl Heinz wrote:

However Acronis is not the problem imho. If a process prevents to be terminated in a grace period (again parameters can be set in the registry) then Windows should terminate the process non grateful like the kill command does.

It's pretty senseless to discuss whether it is an "Acronis only" issue or not, as I have to agree it is an design issue.

It's not at all senseless. Microsoft already figured that part out, and has the code in there to shut down Windows when processes are running. Acronis went out of their way to get around it by putting hooks in when Windows gets past that point. Once Windows has everything non-OS shut down that needs to shut down, and is no longer looking for those things, it gives a screen that says it's shutting down, or in some cases it says it's applying updates. It displays the Operations In Progress message at that point only if it's Acronis causing it because it's Acronis that puts the message there. They don't even have the courtesy of having the message say that it's their operations in progress, and they leave the user clueless.

You are saying that even though Microsoft already does what it does, and it will work with any normal program, they should anticipate programs that get around what they are doing and take care of that too. That makes no sense whatsoever. That's tantamount to saying that they should anticipate what they can't anticipate. However, if they did anticipate yet another thing, then Acronis wouldn't be doing that in the first place. They'd be looking for another way to get around it. It's only when they hit on something that Microsoft didn't anticipate that they will put it in, and that's exactly what they did here. Then they said it's by design.

@hagrinas -
Iif I understand you, you're saying it *is* Acronis' fault. I agree especially since they offered a batch file to fix the problem (even though I had to rewrite it to work for me). But I wonder with their user base shouldn't there be more people suffering and complaining?

Believe what you want Hagrinas. I don't need to convince anyone and know what I am talking about and why I say it is not Acronis fault.
Enjoy your day!

Last comment of Acronis support on that case with Trueimage 2016 was that we should file a problem it this "operation in progress" will be displayed for more than 5 minutes, which is currently zero. Intentionally I ran backups and shutdown the computer to test the behaviour.

Karl Heinz wrote:

Believe what you want Hagrinas. I don't need to convince anyone and know what I am talking about and why I say it is not Acronis fault.
Enjoy your day!

Last comment of Acronis support on that case with Trueimage 2016 was that we should file a problem it this "operation in progress" will be displayed for more than 5 minutes, which is currently zero. Intentionally I ran backups and shutdown the computer to test the behaviour.

You obviously don't know what you are taking about as you are completely wrong.

NW

Karl Heinz wrote:

Believe what you want Hagrinas. I don't need to convince anyone and know what I am talking about and why I say it is not Acronis fault.
Enjoy your day!

Last comment of Acronis support on that case with Trueimage 2016 was that we should file a problem it this "operation in progress" will be displayed for more than 5 minutes, which is currently zero. Intentionally I ran backups and shutdown the computer to test the behaviour.

I'll also add my concern that you seem to be deliberately trying to confuse the issue.

If this is by design, then please explain why the "operations in progress" NEVER finishes. I've personally left one for 48 hours, for a backup that normally takes 2 hours.

[quote=Bo3b Johnson]

Karl Heinz wrote:

If this is by design, then please explain why the "operations in progress" NEVER finishes. I've personally left one for 48 hours, for a backup that normally takes 2 hours.

I say it's by design because Acronis explicitly said it's by design. I can't say why it hasn't finished in 48 hours in your case. You would have to ask Acronis. The point of this thread is that the Operations In Progress appears in the first place. Most people in your situation would have wanted Windows to give then the opportunity to shut down the process or abort the shutdown. That's the ability that Acronis took away. Since Acronis explicitly said that, I can't see why you are blaming Microsoft.

This is from the Acronis website:

"19016: Acronis Backup Software: Slow Windows Shutdown or Restart with "Operations are in progress, please wait" on Splash Screen

Created - February 16, 2011; Updated - October 3, 2014;
This is expected behavior. The message is displayed if there are running tasks at the time of shutdown or restart

This article applies to:

All Acronis backup software"

"Cause
This is designed behavior. To avoid data corruption, Acronis Scheduler service postpones the system shutdown or restart process until:
...
the backup/validation/etc. task in completed in [pre 2015] Acronis backup software."

https://kb.acronis.com/content/19016

you say that as if his 48 hours is some rare case, this NEVER EVER FOR ETERNITY issue is almost all the time, everyone is having this permanent delay of shutdown, you do not seem to understand that.

Nic Wilson wrote:

you say that as if his 48 hours is some rare case, this NEVER EVER FOR ETERNITY issue is almost all the time, everyone is having this permanent delay of shutdown, you do not seem to understand that.

I understand that completely. If the message stayed up there for a few minutes, this thread wouldn't be here. The problem is the way they interrupt the shutdown. It is not Microsoft's fault that it runs for two days. Acronis explicitly said that they take over and interrupt the shutdown. If they had a task running in the background for three days straight, that would be a separate issue. Whether it runs for two hours or three days, the "Operations in Progress" is a problem. And it's not Microsoft's fault.

Hi Hagrinas,

I suggest you don't waste any more time arguing with Karl. We all know he is wrong and, I suspect, he may in fact have a hidden agenda. I resolved this issue some time ago by disabling scheduling each time a new backup is created. This is far from being ideal but, at least, by doing so I have regained control of what is otherwise excellent backup software. Quite why Acronis have adopted their stubborn stance over this genuine problem is way beyond me.

Business concerns are far more likely to earn the respect of their customers by listening to their complaints and, where appropriate, by being prepared to acknowledge a problem exists, admit their error of judgement and to implement corrections at the earliest opportunity. Acronis have shown a distinct lack of concern for the inconvenience this matter has caused their loyal customers and are likely to suffer as a consequence. It really is a pity. Such behaviour does them no credit whatsoever.

For my part, I will continue to use ATI 2015 for the time being as I have always found it to be reliable and efficient. I have no use for scheduling so that aspect is no longer an issue for me. However, I can certainly understand why others will find this to be a showstopper and consequently will feel forced to switch to an alternative backup solution. Well, Acronis have received plenty warning that this might happen so they have only themselves to blame if their user base and sales continue to drop in the coming months.

Mike

The way to tell which processes are running in Winodw 7 is through Window Task Manager (cntrl-shift-esc). (see attached file). These three Acronis processes continue to run even after a backup has been completed. You can manually end these processes manually in Task Manager by right clicking on them and select "end process" for each one individually or you can save the attached kill_acroniis.txt file on your desktop, change it to a .bat file and double click it before shutting down. This will automatically end the three processes.

My experience in Windows 7 shutdown is that selecting the option "Force Shutdown Background Programs" does not shut down these processes.

Michael Campbell wrote:

Hi Hagrinas,

I suggest you don't waste any more time arguing with Karl. We all know he is wrong and, I suspect, he may in fact have a hidden agenda. I resolved this issue some time ago by disabling scheduling each time a new backup is created. This is far from being ideal but, at least, by doing so I have regained control of what is otherwise excellent backup software. Quite why Acronis have adopted their stubborn stance over this genuine problem is way beyond me.

I think you are right. It's one thing to try to explain something to somebody, it's another thing to make things clear to anybody else who might be reading it, but once everybody but one person gets it, it becomes a waste of time. I hope he realizes that if he continues to post on that, he isn't going to change anybody's mind and this isn't a case of whoever posts last wins.

I suppose all that anybody can do at this point is implement a workaround or abandon the software completely,. At some point, I just stopped all the scheduled jobs and decided to run them manually, but I' been less good at remembering than I would have hoped for. I always left Windows backup active a a weekly job just in case, and the last time I needed to restore, my best shot turned out to be using a Windows backup and converting it to Acronis to do the restore. The down side of not having jobs scheduled and having the risk of validation tying up your machine for three days is that you might get stuck with worthless backups.

I keep my OS on an SSD and have had all my libraries on other drives from the start, so recovering from a Windows backup isn't all that bad, and even if it's months out of date there's a good chance that nothing significant is lost. Also, these days products such as Microsoft Onedrive or Google Drive will back up your individual files in the background, so my important stuff is taken care of. It's still better to have complete backups, but the last time I lost a drive with data, my best backup was months out of date and Onedrive saved the day. Microsoft isn't very good with explaining the details, but it had no problem figuring out that my PC lacked certain files and that the software wasn't told at any point that I deleted them so it knew well enough to recover them on its own in the background.

Having current and reliable backups is still the best bet, but given the Operations problem, the fact that computers need hard reboots because of it, the fact that chkdisk might need to be run but without doing so, Acronis backups might be worthless, I have to ask myself why I'm wasting my time over this.

Hi Sumner,

Yes, you are quite correct and these suggestions are probably well known to most of us who have been affected and visited these forums for help and advice. Still, it does bear repeating for those who wish to go down that route and don't feel like wading through all the posts in this thread.

The fact remains we should not have to employ these measures. When this shutdown nonsense first came to light I too tried these workarounds but decided, in the end, that it was just too risky. It relies on you remembering to take that extra step at shutdown to avoid being caught out.* At my age, it's a risk not worth taking. Instead I started from scratch by FULLY uninstalling ATI 2015, after deleting all my backups, before reinstalling and reconfiguring the various parameters for fresh backup images. This included disabling scheduling tasks and making sure each differential (preferred in my case) backup is verified automatically immediately after the backup has completed. This works just fine and I have experienced no issues whatsoever. As Hagrinas has pointed out, all that remains is for me to remember to make subsequent backups at appropriate intervals. For me, this is not as critical as it will be for others as very little is changing on my drives these days.

Regards,
Mike

*Edit: before anyone starts jumping up and down, I am aware that the batch process can be integrated into the Shutdown process, but I found that it extends the Shutdown time quite significantly which, in itself, can be a pain if you are hanging about waiting to ensure all is well:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12434863/executing-a-batch-script-on…

I am getting fed up with this subject. Look at how many posts there are on this chain!! Howmany wasted hours!!
I have switched to Macrium Reflect. No time limited support. Lightning fast response to support questions. Has everything you might need. So who needs anything more??

Just to whet your appetite: I had a problem not necessarily caused by Reflect. I asked for support on it. Within less than 2 hours (!) I received their answer which helped me to solve the problem. Do I need to say more?

Just draw your own conclusions!

Wanderer wrote:

I am getting fed up with this subject. Look at how many posts there are on this chain!! Howmany wasted hours!!

You and me both! I have only become involved again because I have been receiving email notifications recently that new posts are being added to this thread. I suppose the hope is that Acronis will eventually see the light, swallow their misplaced pride, and do the right thing to save their product. Sadly, it doesn't appear to be happening, at least not openly, and that is where they risk losing the respect from their hitherto loyal customer base.

Acronis, my recommendation to you is to admit your error of judgement, assure us you are 'fixing' this issue in any future updates or major version releases and we can all finally move on. As matters stand, it is now very unlikely that I will 'upgrade' to the next version of your product and, after so many years of unqualified satisfaction, ATI 2015 will remain the last in the series resident on my machine.

Mike

Michael
I haven't had that problem. To use the batch file as as shutdown script you have to add a line "call shutdown /a". Did you do that?

Bo3b Johnson wrote:

Karl Heinz wrote:

Believe what you want Hagrinas. I don't need to convince anyone and know what I am talking about and why I say it is not Acronis fault.
Enjoy your day!

Last comment of Acronis support on that case with Trueimage 2016 was that we should file a problem it this "operation in progress" will be displayed for more than 5 minutes, which is currently zero. Intentionally I ran backups and shutdown the computer to test the behaviour.

I'll also add my concern that you seem to be deliberately trying to confuse the issue.

If this is by design, then please explain why the "operations in progress" NEVER finishes. I've personally left one for 48 hours, for a backup that normally takes 2 hours.

Well when I started to post here that this issue IS fixed with Windows 10 and ATI 2016, I never thought that this would cause a thunderstorm of disappointed customers that WILL NOT and perhaps even deliberatly will not see a patch for this issue.

As I stated before Acronis went an unhonorable way to fix issue in next releases rather than deploying patches.
As I also state if anyone of you is affected, claim this issue to be present and provingly unsolved over many versions of Acronis, there is good chance to get a free upgrade license issued for TI 2016.

Michael Campbell wrote:

I suspect, he may in fact have a hidden agenda.

Mike

My idea to post here at all was to help and to spread the word. Given there are plenty duplicate threads for this same error across several versions of Acronis. I decided to post here.

Wanderer wrote:

'fixing' this issue in any future updates or major version releases and we can all finally move on. As matters stand, it is now very unlikely that I will 'upgrade' to the next version of your product and, after so many years of unqualified satisfaction, ATI 2015 will remain the last in the series resident on my machine.
Mike

As I said there is a solution to this but because of their way they work, they won't bring a patch. On my list with bugs for ATI 2015, there are still 5 things unsolved. Some are even continued in ATI 2016. My disappointment over the last 3 releases of ATIH and the constant lowered quality for every spoiled out yearly iteration was the major reason to join the beta for ATI 2016.

In a quintessence I share your rage and disatisfaction. Sorry for causing so much trouble while I came here to post something positive.

Hi Karl,

Please don't worry about it. Our ire is more about the frustrations with a development team that refuses to acknowledge what is potentially a serious issue rather than individuals who are doing their best to support this behaviour or even deny the existence of the problem. No software is perfect and ATI 2015 is no exception. However, it seems to me that contributors like Anna are up against a stubborn cohort of coders who will go down all guns blazing rather than admit they may have got it wrong. In the end, she has no choice but to follow the company line. Unfortunately such policies will only succeed in driving away customers instead of earning their respect. Such a shame, but fairly typical these days. Deny there is a problem and issue statements implying the vast majority are unaffected. We cannot prove otherwise as relatively few feel inclined to post on forums preferring instead to make decisions based on reading about the experiences of others.

Recently I purchased a recently developed unique product designed to enhance my guitar playing experience. Unfortunately there was a problem with high hum levels and this I reported. At first I was persuaded to believe that the fault might lie with my household wiring rather than the unit itself. However, I was not convinced and the unit's developer and manufacturer were quickly persuaded to look further into the problem. This continued over several weeks, including many friendly and positive exchanges, and throughout this process it was all too clear how determined everyone was to pin down the problem and find a solution. Eventually the source of the problem was isolated and the fix applied and I have never looked back. Such an experience earns enormous respect and lasting loyalty for a business that takes your problems seriously and demonstrates a willingness to spend as much time as is necessary to find a satisfactory solution. It turned out that I was the only one affected yet that fix is now being incorporated in all future production units.

Regards,
Mike

Edit: BTW, you attributed a quote in your last post to 'Wanderer' when it should have been me.

Karl Heinz wrote:

Well when I started to post here that this issue IS fixed with Windows 10 and ATI 2016, I never thought that this would cause a thunderstorm of disappointed customers that WILL NOT and perhaps even deliberatly will not see a patch for this issue.

As I stated before Acronis went an unhonorable way to fix issue in next releases rather than deploying patches.
As I also state if anyone of you is affected, claim this issue to be present and provingly unsolved over many versions of Acronis, there is good chance to get a free upgrade license issued for TI 2016.
...
As I said there is a solution to this but because of their way they work, they won't bring a patch. On my list with bugs for ATI 2015, there are still 5 things unsolved. Some are even continued in ATI 2016. My disappointment over the last 3 releases of ATIH and the constant lowered quality for every spoiled out yearly iteration was the major reason to join the beta for ATI 2016.

In a quintessence I share your rage and disatisfaction. Sorry for causing so much trouble while I came here to post something positive.

Thank you for the clarification. I'm in the same boat as others. The backups never finish and cause me to hard-reset my machine, potentially corrupting both the OS and the backup.

Given the Acronis reaction to this backup breaking bug, I'm not inclined to try upgrades. Hard to understand how corporations can be so stupid nowadays.

Karl Heinz wrote:

In a quintessence I share your rage and disatisfaction. Sorry for causing so much trouble while I came here to post something positive.

Thank you for posting that. I think it all comes down to the fact that Acronis dug their heels in and won't listen to others, while you are open to other views and can take into account what others say. If Acronis were like you, we wouldn't have the problem. I think that they think that if they admit there's a problem, it would leave them beaten. In reality, it will leave them stronger.

"Given the Acronis reaction to this backup breaking bug, I'm not inclined to try upgrades. Hard to understand how corporations can be so stupid nowadays."

Well I would even insist to try upgrades. You can try out for free and roll back if it is not addressing your problem. Acronis is very fair in this regard that they offer a free functional demo, that can even be exploited in some regard.

Forgive me the following offtopic post but this is important to understand things they do:
Nevertheless, we can complain about this business practice but I think that Acronis as a team is not as big as we think. (I guess).
Many companies can only survive to pay salarys by continueing to bring out new versions.

I have seen companies that failed like those made TuneUpUtilities. We all might have used that tool, but it got honestly obsolete after Windows XP, because since Vista and later Windows is servicing itself better and better.

The company is down. CCleaner deliberately took their place, and it is free.

Same for Acronis the existance of other free tools, that even look very much like Acronis products and also integrated Windows Backup features in Windows 7 (and back in Windows 10) are competitors that ruin their business. On the other hand imho with ATIH 2015 they ruined it themselves by cutting down features and selling it quite same priced etc.

In my humble opinion Acronis seems be in a crisis and are affected to get obsolete.
- harddrive and SSD lifespans are very long
- external disks come along with own backup tools, that literally replace the need of Acronis
- Reinstalling or "refreshing" Windows 8.x and Windows 10 takes a quarter hour on SSDs
- Acronis bundle reduced / older and even versions with hardware (OCZ SSD, Western Digital)
- Windows has backup tools
- PC market shrinked considerably in the past years
- ATI 2016 will be the first unified backup that offers Smartphone / Tablet apps for new markets / customers
- the introduction of AHCI made the universal restore / additional well paid license for that obsolete, thus they decided to include it for "free" in ATIH 2015 and 2016.

etc.

you see they are in a bad position and so cannot offer free long term support. This said, the responsiveness on this forum lacks too for older versions. Without the Acronis MVPs you likely won't get any answer from what I have seen.

Acronis has a great reputation, but I don't know many people that use this product for productive business, which also makes it hard just to survive by selling to private users.
Their expansion to offer cloud space etc, is again just a way to earn easy money and not being too dependent on selling new iterations of a Backup application.

Just my 2 cents...

Karl Heinz wrote:

"Given the Acronis reaction to this backup breaking bug, I'm not inclined to try upgrades. Hard to understand how corporations can be so stupid nowadays."

Well I would even insist to try upgrades. You can try out for free and roll back if it is not addressing your problem. Acronis is very fair in this regard that they offer a free functional demo, that can even be exploited in some regard.

That's a perfectly fair statement and I'd encourage people to do so if they are like minded. Others feel that they already paid for a crippled product and shouldn't have to pay for an upgrade. It would be nice if Acronis acknowledged the issue and even made a promotional offer of some sort to those who were affected and brought it to their attention. It's not for me to say whether buying an upgrade is the right decision for anybody. I think the only reason people are here is that they like the product in general and simply want it to work for them.

Issue solved

There was an update for ATIH 2015, which also solves the issue like I claimed it for ATIH 2016 beta.

TI 2015 Update 2 Release notes (Windows)

Release date: July 20, 2015

Languages: English, German, French, Russian, Japanese

Build number: 6613

This release includes bug fixes, increased stability and performance improvements.
List of fixed issues

Several issues with "Operations are in progress, please wait" message at shutdown

I have ATI 2015 Build 6613 but I still have the shutdown problem. If I shut down while the scheduled backup is in progress, the backup terminates. I thought this was fixed with 6613. If I upgrade to ATI 2016 will I see the fix?

My posted fix (6-24-15) will not shut down a backup in process. If you need to shut down your computer there are two things you can do. Open Acronis to see if anything is running. If yes, then cancel the backup. You will then be able to shut down without a problem. However, after rebooting you will have to go back to Acronis to restart the backup but it will start from the beginning. There is a setting in the backup schedule page that you can select to start a missed backup on startup which I think will restart your backup automatically also from the beginning but you should check.

There is another way to check if Acronis is backing up without having to open the program in Windows 7. I don't know if it's available in other versions of Windows. Open my attachment. You'll see a desktop In the lower right hand corner of the System Bar you should see a tiny triangle pointed up. Put your cursor on that and a window shlould open named customize with tiny icons. If Acronis is running, its icon will be jiggling and putting your cursor over it will indicate the percent complete. If its not running the cursor will be still and you'll see the message shown on the screenshot.

cannot promise. Use the trail to get sure about that.

I had this problem during the time I had Win 8.1 running and I thought it would go away with installing Windows 10, it didn't.
I tried to run KillAconis.bat within win 10 however got stuck at Scripts (startup/Shutdown) as could not see any place to Run C:\KillAcronis.bat

Have I missed something? Or maybe doesn't work with 10?

Ron

Hi Ron. I checked and batch files will not run in Windows 10. I found a site that discusses an alternate. I have not read it in detail and Googling "replacing batch files in Windows 10" will give you a bunch of sites to review. You'll have to determine the equivelent commands to be used in 10.
http://windowsitpro.com/powershell/break-your-batch-habit-and-move-powe…

FYI I am still using Acronis 14. I had upgraded to 15 but when I tried to do a restore it became totally unresponsive so I went back to the earliere version. 14 does everything I need. I find new graphic interfaces not worth the effort to learn

I have disabled all Acronis autostart stuff, I dont' use any scheduled backups anyway.
But Acronis STILL hangs my PC when shutting down. What operations are 'in progress' if I don't want to use any of them ?

Is this also 'expected behavior' ?

Right Click on your task bar at the bottom of your screen. Click on "start task manager". Click on "processes" tab. click on "image name" to make the list alphabetical and you'll what Acronis operations are running. There will be two or three . You can right click each of these and select "end process" and then your shutdown will be normal

I've previously posted a file to do this automatically. It's attached to this message as a text file. Download it to your desktop. Change the suffix from"txt" to "bat". You'll get some sort of a warning but click OK. This will now be a Window batch script, like a mini-program Double click on the icon before you shut down. A black command window will appear briefly and then you can safely shut down.

If you want to automate this process on shutdown here are some instructions.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12434863/executing-a-batch-script-on…'

I have just updated Acronis 2015 and one of the bug fixes in the update was for this issue so it may actually be resolved now.

Unfortunately, it's still not working (ATI 2016 Build 6027) correctly.

Backup is setup to start upon event (System Startup with delay of 15minutes, once a day only). It's starting fine, and backup is completed successfully. However if PC stays on past midnight, then during shutdown 'Operations are in progress' blue screen pop up, causing that computer to not shutdown propertly (or rather at all). The only solution is to turn it off manually.

Here is how you set up the batch file to automatically run when you shut down the computer.  It should work if you set Acronis to shut down after completing the backup.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12434863/executing-a-batch-script-on…

Yes, we do expect them to address these issues no matter what.

The issue of problems with shutdown for ATIH 2016 are being addressed in a update which Acronis are hoping to release soon - April has been mentioned.  See comment at http://forum.acronis.com/forum/114264#comment-341465

See also comment http://forum.acronis.com/forum/114003#comment-336713 and 
https://forum.acronis.com/forum/114074

Today, when I started Acronis to check upon a failed backup on my PC running Windows 8.1, there was a pop-up message about an update. I permitted the update that failed twice, but eventually succeeded. The new update is  v. 19.0.6571.

When I rebooted the PC there was a message that Acronis had to be terminated before the PC could be shutdown in about 2 minutes. This error message was supposed to have been fixed in the previous update. I'm very annoyed about this. I now have to go into Services.msc or in Taskmanager and shut down Acronis each and every time I need to either reboot or shutdown my PC.

I'm now having to consider looking for alternate backup software.

Miriam Klepper

bubbie021@gmail.com

Hi Miriam,

Seems, after all this time, Acronis still haven't learned their lesson :(

Try Macrium Reflect - A very solid product which is so much better than Acronis and very user friendly. I built a new system towards the end of last year and needed a good backup solution I could rely on. Suffice it to say Acronis wasn't even considered this time around. Such a pity as I have supported the product for so many years.

I imagine that I am not alone. However, in all fairness, they did acknowledge the problem eventually, but it seems their stubbornness over this issue has persisted regardless of our efforts to convince them to fix it once and for all. Very sad. However, I am still using earlier versions of Acronis, which predate this nonsense, on a couple of other machines. I imagine these will have to be removed once my licence runs out.

Mike

Hi Michael, hi Miriam, I am not here to advocate for Acronis but I still think that this issue can be solved and should be solved once and for all. For some reason it still plagues some users but I haven't seen it for a very long time with ATIH 2016 so I clearly understand your point Miriam that you are not satisfied with the situation moreover as Steve said it will be fixed and it was listed as fixed in the changelogs. Miriam you should really consider to contact the Acronis support. You do not need to buy a support ticket imho as this issue is critical for backup and restore and support in these cases are free.
In some cases, I have received a free upgrade in the past (would be ATIH 2017) - far before I was MVP - if the problem cannot be solved in the 2016 release you have. But first of all this is only something that can be considered by the technical support staff.

If they can solve your issue please pinpoint the solution here or let us know how they handled it so we can discuss this with the Acronis staff.

I have given up on general backup software and have swithed fo Synchback Pro  which is a staright backuup program. It works on prfiles and generally works in one direction but can be used in  synch working both waysl I  backup my data files to both my NAS drive and a local USB drive by creating different profiles.  It is incredibly flexible and the backup files are aceesible using Windows Exployer unless you choose to encrypt them  Restoring lost files can be done with Windows Explorer.  Restoring the entire data folder can be done with a specific profile.

There are no shutdown problems with this software!!!  It is regularly ugraded and has good email support for registered owners.  No ticket fees.

My work files are done on my personel computer but I also have a company computer which I use for business email. I also sotre my work product on this comptuer by synching the folder on the NAS drive with one on this computer.

You can sete up rule to copy only changed files to keep the backup time short.  The program speed is very fast.

By the way, because of my belt and suspenders approach i also backup to the Cloud using Carbontie.  Google, Microsoft and Amazon cloud backups are crap;.

We'd been away for a couple of days for a family member's funeral, so after we'd come home and I'd used the PC for a while and for some reason needed a reboot, that's when the error occurred. After rebooting, I'd noticed that I'd forgotten to reconnect my External Drives before turning on the PC. I saw in Acronis, which of the backups had failed, and it was the one related to a Western Digital hard drive which I'd disconnected when we left home. I never leave any PC equipment on when we go away. I ran the backup manually after reconnecting the WD drive, and after it finished and was validated, I tried a reboot of the PC. It worked fine. No error message. It was the scheduled backup that had failed because the WD drive wasn't connected that led to the error message upon a reboot.

I read several comments that users are switching to Macrium Reflect. One of the reasons I initially liked Acronis was that I could go into a backup and if I kept clicking through folders and sub-folders until I got to a file that I'd accidentally deleted, I could then copy the backup version back to my second hard drive (Drive D:\). Does Macrium let one do that? Do you have to Mount the Drive as a virtual drive in Macrium? In Acronis, you don't have to Mount the Drive anymore. I recently deleted a photo that I thought needed too much editing, but it had been backed up within a full backup and in the daily My Pictures backup. I was able to drill down within the backup by clicking into the folders and sub-folders till I was able to see the file, then copied it and pasted the image file back into its proper location on my secondary hard drive (I have a Solid State Drive for Windows 8.1 & my Applications - Drive C:\, and a SATA drive - Drive D:\ that stores all my Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc.)

Dear Karl,

If you saw my last post, the issue resolved itself when I reconnected my Western Digital Hard Drive, went back into Acronis, and manually did the backup that had been scheduled during the days we were away to attend a funeral. Once the backup completed itself and was validated, I tried doing a reboot. There was no Acronis error message stating that Acronis "Operations were in Progress."

Before posting to this Forum, I actually tried calling Acronis, but the recording on the telphone insisted that I had to give a credit card # just to get support for a single issue, which I'd thought at the time was a bug in Acronis softwre that was supposed to have been fixed in the previous update. I thought that somehow the bug had come back when they tweaked the software to 19.0.6571. At the time I didn't know that the error had occured from a failed backup because a drive was not connected. I checked the support page and it claimed that my support had ended Feb. 5, 2016. I'd upgraded to Acronis 2016 on January 6, 2016.

Using this Forum is just as obtuse as trying to get in touch with Acronis whose technical support is non-existent. You have to first search to find the Forum topic, but if I went back in and needed to post again, I couldn't find that same Forum topic easily again. I'd gotten an e-mail from Acronis with your post and another user's , but when I clicked on the links it took me to the beginning of the postings on this Forum topic. I had to search thru all 190 posts before I got to yourx so I could reply to you.

The problem with Acronis, is if one schedules a backup and the external drive is not connected, of course the backup fails. However, a reboot or Shutdown of the PC should not be affected. That is a definite bug in the software. Furthermore, once I reconnected the Western Digital Hard Drive, I should not have had to do a manual backup. The software should be smart enough to know that a scheduled backup that had been missed should run automatically when I reconnect the external hard drive. And one shouldn't have to check a box in the software to enable this feature.

At this point I'm pretty disgusted with Acronis sofware. Two times the update downloaded and failed to install. It only worked on the thrid attempt. Acronis should have allowed customers to download the update and install it at one's leisure. I usually save updated to my Downloads folder, then when I want to install an update I right click to install the update with RevoUninstaller, so I can have a record of the install in case something goes wrong and I have to uninstall an update.

If Acronis truly wants to keep its customer base, it should (1) extend the support period, (2) if a customer discovers a software bug, one should be able to telephone Acronis directly, without having to pay with a credit card - there should be another telephone prompt where users could call to inform tech support about a possible bug in the software, (3) Acronis should offer Chat support, so that users could actually chat with a Live Person on a technical issue, and (4) allow customers to download an update and install it at one's leisure.

I would like to get as much information on Macrium Reflect as possible. Does anyone have any screen shots? And I want to know if one could retrieve a file from within a backup using Macrium like one does in Acronis? I mean files that were accidentally deleted, but would still be in a previous backup. In Acronis 2016, one didn't have to Mount the backup drive as a Virtual Drive as in previous versions, one just kept clicking thru folders and subfolders until one reached the file, copied it and then pasted it back into its rightful place on one's hard drive (or in my case on my secondary drive - Drive D:\ - where I store all My Documents, My Pictures, My Videos, etc).

bubbie021@gmail.com

Dear Miriam, thanks for your extensive answer. I cannot tell about Macrium as I never used it so far. Just tried other competitive products at a time when I was also quite unsatisfied with ATIH.

" I checked the support page and it claimed that my support had ended Feb. 5, 2016. I'd upgraded to Acronis 2016 on January 6, 2016."

There should be always a possibility to contact email support regardless of your existing 30 day support. Alternatively using the functionality in the application > help > send feedback (no reply guaranteed here, but sometimes they do)

The key is to use the right way to reach this, phone seems not to be possible as you said:

Try this when you face issues next time:

Login to your acronis account

Generally review your support cases: https://www.acronis.com/de-de/my/cases/

contact support: https://www.acronis.com/de-de/support/

Choose > Technical problems > Full Version > ATIH 2016 > Email support

Chat is also available at this page

As you see they are offering a lot of ways to get in touch meanwhile, while I agree that the 30 day support limitation is way too short. But as I have outlined before this is more targeted for first level issues like installation etc. Whenever you have a critical backup / restore issue, they'll help you regardless the 30 days support.

" The problem with Acronis, is if one schedules a backup and the external drive is not connected, of course the backup fails. However, a reboot or Shutdown of the PC should not be affected. That is a definite bug in the software. Furthermore, once I reconnected the Western Digital Hard Drive, I should not have had to do a manual backup."

This should be actually the case and implemented but afaik it is not the default setting. Please check the job options if the extended settings (schedule tab) and/or the last tab.
I can remember that there is an option that will be available if an external drive is selected as target.

The behaviour that the computer will show the shutdown message "operations in progress" is intended but so far they listed it in the changelogs this should not take longer than 2 minutes to terminate. After this timeout Acronis will self-terminate all services, just as the OP suggested. So the original issue of this thread that people are stuck in a shutdown should be solved.

(1) extend the support period - agreed
(2) if a customer discovers a software bug, one should be able to telephone Acronis directly, without having to pay with a credit card - there should be another telephone prompt where users could call to inform tech support about a possible bug in the software - this is possible via website as outline above.
(3) Acronis should offer Chat support, so that users could actually chat with a Live Person on a technical issue - is possible via website as outline above.
(4) allow customers to download an update and install it at one's leisure - Miriam, also on the Acronis webpage you can download the lastest build anytime and do what you wanted to do. Have a look over here: https://www.acronis.com/de-de/my/products/

ATIH does ask a user if one want to download the available update at startup. Recently I have even suggested that they enforce automatic updates (just like Adobe Flash, Acrobat Reader) because a lot of people aren't launching the application but use scheduled backups and so they would not get updates anyway because they usually do not launch the application again. The idea of having enforced automatic updates does not conflict with the wish of your having control if ones does get updates or not because it is possible to turn off the automatic update check in the account tab.

"I'd gotten an e-mail from Acronis with your post and another user's , but when I clicked on the links it took me to the beginning of the postings on this Forum topic. I had to search thru all 190 posts before I got to yourx so I could reply to you. "

This nasty problem is driving me nuts aswell, I have raised it last week and the reply was that this is a known issue with the forum software they are using. I expect and also hope they are going to upgrade the forum to offer a same experience as for their new webpages they made.

There is a shortcut at the top of a topic on the first page. Click on "x NEW" to get redirected to the latest replies you haven't read.

Let me know if this helped you.

When will you guys wake up???? Don't you ever realize that there is a limit for not listening to customers???

About 4 months ago I got fed up with this discussion and switched to Macrium Reflect. One of my best moves!!! Miriam, if you want to save lots and lots of hours trying fix your problem, follow my steps and switch to Macrium Reflect. Don't worry it will do all you need and Acronis can do. In fact, if you want to browse through any old image, just click on it in explorer and Macrium will mount the image as a virtual drive!!!

So now there are no more "operations in progress", no more need for tranquilizers....

Good luck to all and byebye Acronis

It is not like they do not listen all, but sometimes it takes a bit too much time. I would not advice Miriam to switch products, also to protect her investment on the license, as long she can handle the problem and as she said it disappeared aswell.

I admit, it might be irritating for new users having an Acronis customer forum where there is few active presence of Acronis staff. They are reading but not neccesarily answering all posts. I know situations with other software developers though. This can be fairly misunderstood as they if they do not care, but if you understand how this forum works, it is ok.

That's why they assign MVPs so we can take actively care about customer problems posted herein. If there is no chance to help, there is always the customer support, free in many cases, as I've outlined before. Good luck with Macrium, each on his own, right :)

I only got the error during Shutdown or Reboot about "Operations in Progress" if I've disconnected my External Hard Drives, i.e., when we go on vacation, I unplug as much as I can as Florida is the Lightning Capitol of the World.

When an external drive is connected, there is an additional checkbox under "Advanced Settings" in Acronis 2016. I've checked the box to "run (the backup) when a deviced is attached."

Now if I disconnect the External Hard Drives when I shutdown or reboot the I get no Acronis errors during Shutdown or Rebooting.

I've asked the Tech Support guy I deal with at AUM Computers who built my custom PC whether or not I should switch to Macrium Reflect. I'd heard from someone in the Forum that it was easier to use and had better tech support than just the forum support Acronis provided. Murji's reply was that the tech support at Macrium Reflect was not much better - only e-mail support and that the software was not easy to configure. He said that AUM had used Acronis, Macrium Reflect and another software product to backup customer hard drives and generally tech support was terrible across the board.

As for Acronis tech support, some 4 months after I made my initial post I received a voicemail that I should look in my e-mail for a response to my original post.  It would have been much nicer to have a call back phone number to speak to a real person.

The July 9, 2016 e-mail stated: " There is a new comment on the following post: Fix for "operations are in
progress" during PC shutdown in Win Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1

-----
Hello all,

I'm sorry for the delayed responce.

Our development team is working on the issue (ticket� TI-30294 ("/Operations
are in progress, please wait" message at shutdown/)).�

Best regards.

-----
To view this comment on Acronis Forum, follow this link:
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/45058#comment-373811"

However, when I clicked on the above link, it took me to the top of the same forum, and one has to comb thru all the postings to find out the answer that the e-mail referenced. I'm a retired Librarian, and appreciate direct links. Needless to say, I didn't have the patience to go thu hundreds of postings to find what the e-mail might have referenced.

Obviously there is a bad disconnect as to how Acronis deals with customer's complaints about bugs in the software.

I would change to another backup software if I found a reliable one that had decent tech support. Then there's the question whether or not the other backup software would recognize and alllow restoring previous backup made with a different product. So here I am now stuck.

If Acronis truly wants to keep customers, it should have extended support. I wouldn't even have minded if extended support was bundled into the price of the software. I have Premium Support with my Security software - Trend Micro Maxium Security. If I have a problem, I dial the Premium Support Line and instead of an automated attendant, I get a live person to talk to and ususally don't have to go beyond that person to get an answer to a problem. That's the way software support is supposed to be. User friendly!!!

I only got the error during Shutdown or Reboot about "Operations in Progress" if I've disconnected my External Hard Drives, i.e., when we go on vacation, I unplug as much as I can as Florida is the Lightning Capitol of the World.

When an external drive is connected, there is an additional checkbox under "Advanced Settings" in Acronis 2016. I've checked the box to "run (the backup) when a deviced is attached."

Now if I disconnect the External Hard Drives when I shutdown or reboot the I get no Acronis errors during Shutdown or Rebooting.

I've asked the Tech Support guy I deal with at AUM Computers who built my custom PC whether or not I should switch to Macrium Reflect. I'd heard from someone in the Forum that it was easier to use and had better tech support than just the forum support Acronis provided. Murji's reply was that the tech support at Macrium Reflect was not much better - only e-mail support and that the software was not easy to configure. He said that AUM had used Acronis, Macrium Reflect and another software product to backup customer hard drives and generally tech support was terrible across the board.

As for Acronis tech support, some 4 months after I made my initial post I received a voicemail that I should look in my e-mail for a response to my original post.  It would have been much nicer to have a call back phone number to speak to a real person.

The July 8, 2016 e-mail stated: " There is a new comment on the following post: Fix for "operations are in
progress" during PC shutdown in Win Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1

-----
Hello all,

I'm sorry for the delayed responce.

Our development team is working on the issue (ticket� TI-30294 ("/Operations
are in progress, please wait" message at shutdown/)).�

Best regards.

-----
To view this comment on Acronis Forum, follow this link:
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/45058#comment-373811"

However, when I clicked on the above link, it took me to the top of the same forum, and one has to comb thru all the postings to find out the answer that the e-mail referenced. I'm a retired Librarian, and appreciate direct links. Needless to say, I didn't have the patience to go thu hundreds of postings to find what the e-mail might have referenced.

Obviously there is a bad disconnect as to how Acronis deals with customer's complaints about bugs in the software.

I would change to another backup software if I found a reliable one that had decent tech support. Then there's the question whether or not the other backup software would recognize and alllow restoring previous backup made with a different product. So here I am now stuck.

If Acronis truly wants to keep customers, it should have extended support. I wouldn't even have minded if extended support was bundled into the price of the software. I have Premium Support with my Security software - Trend Micro Maxium Security. If I have a problem, I dial the Premium Support Line and instead of an automated attendant, I get a live person to talk to and ususally don't have to go beyond that person to get an answer to a problem. That's the way software support is supposed to be. User friendly!!!

Miriam Klepper wrote:

If Acronis truly wants to keep customers, it should have extended support. I wouldn't even have minded if extended support was bundled into the price of the software. I have Premium Support with my Security software - Trend Micro Maxium Security. If I have a problem, I dial the Premium Support Line and instead of an automated attendant, I get a live person to talk to and ususally don't have to go beyond that person to get an answer to a problem. That's the way software support is supposed to be. User friendly!!!

Miriam, the shutdown problem has been fixed in the latest build for ATIH 2016 and 2017 versions.

The forum link problem with taking you to the top of the thread instead directly to the post quoted is also known and Acronis are in the process of switching to a different forum package that is hoped will solve that issue too.

Lastly, Acronis have listened to the feedback about extended support and have introduced support for 1 Year with the new ATIH 2017 version instead of the measly 30 days for prior ones.  See http://www.acronis.com/en-gb/personal/computer-backup/

Hi Miram I coulnd't advocate more towards the new support policy and this issue got fixed finally for the new releases. Despite all you issues you had, try the 2017 demo and have a look how it works for you. If your issue will be solved you might contact Acronis for a special offer for the upgrade as your support request has not been addresses. It's worth a try.

So as Steve suggested try out the latest update for ATIH 2016, consider a reinstallation or straight away give ATIH 2017 demo a try.