Windows 10 Upgrade Horror Story
I have Acronis True Image 2015 build number 6613
A few days ago, I took my windows 8.1 machine, did a full disk backup of the C: Drive with Acronis to an external USB drive. I created a bootable media disk. Then I started the windows 10 upgrade.
After several hours, the upgrade stopped with a "something went wrong and we need to reboot your computer" screen. I let it sit there for an hour, and still nothing happened so powered off, and then back on. The computer turned on, I could see the power light glowing, but no BIOS messages, nothing. Just a black screen.
So I inserted the bootable Acronis CD, powered off and back on. Hitting the F9 (boot menu for my machine) several times, but still nothing but a black screen. Couldn't get BIOS setup or anything. Just a black screen.
So finally I purchased a new computer, and took the C: drive from my dead computer and added it as a second internal drive. Booted up, and the old C: Drive from my old computer looked fine, I can see files and folders, etc.
So then I tried using Acronis to recover the backup I made at the beginning to what was now the D: drive in my new computer, but I could not figure out any way to do it.
So now I'm left with the option of reinstalling (and re-purchasing, in some cases) all my software, reconfiguring Outlook and a bunch of other stuff.
Is there some other way I could have handled this situation?

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Thanks for your analysis. I know it's suspicious that the old machine won't boot up with the Acronis boot disk. But I tried that disk in the new machine and it did boot up. I tried using that to restore the backup to my old "c:" drive (now "d:" in the new machine), but Acronis seemed to insist on restoring it to the c: drive and I couldn't see a way to change that.
I was hoping to restore by backup to the old c: drive from the old machine, put it back in and see if it would boot up from that.
I made the bootable media from my old machine (windows 8).
I made the backup from Acronis 2015 which was installed on the old machine at the time.
I'm not giving up yet, and if I have anything new to report, I'll post it here.
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Booting a Win8.1 system is much more complicated than older Windows versions.
Besides partiton c: there are other hidden partitions involved, especially if you have a system with UEFI boot.
Assuming your backup of drive c: is ok, I suggest to do the following steps:
Put your old harddisk back to your old computer (I mean, rebuild your system as it was before your trouble startet)
Use a Microsoft Windows 8.1 CD to boot your computer. Then you can try to repair your boot problems using the provided Windows repair capabilities.
If this does not work, I suggest to make a new (temporarily) installation of Windows 8.1 on this computer.
You don´t have to make this Windows look "wonderful", just check, if this boots and works.
After that you can restore drive c: from your backup and so hopefully get your old system back.
You can do this with the Acronis boot CD - if your existing CD does not work, you can download an ISO image from Acronis after logging into your Acronis accout.
One important thing: be shure to always shutdown Windows 8.1 completely before making any restore. Simply switching off your Windows 8.1 before restoring a backup will give strange results, since Windows 8.1 stores information in these hidden partitions, wich will not fit to your restored contents.
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Hi
I am not an expert with computers, but I can work my way around most problems.
I have Windows 10 running smoothly, at last, and I want to use "acronis". I understand I need to change the boot order in the BIOS. This probably a silly question, but here goes.
Question. Do I alter the BIOS when I want to reinstall from the "acronis" back up, or do I alter the BIOS before the first backup?
Question. If I change the BIOS now to make my external hard drive the first item on the list, will this stop my Computer starting up normally?
Thanks for any reply
Martin
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Acronis does not know anything about your BIOS so no need to make a change before a backup.
When you need to boot from a restore bootable CD, change your BIOS to make sure the CD is the first boot device. After the restore you might need to change it again to specify the hard drive is the first boot device. Some computers also have a "Boot Menu" option while it starts up. There you can select which device to boot with. In that case you might not need to change any BIOS settings.
If you external drive is bootable then you will be able to keep it as the first in the startup device.
Stephan
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Hi thanks for the reply.
But how could you get into the BIOS if the computer is u/s to change the settings to reinstall from an external hard drive with acronis on it?
If that is impossible, then acronis is no help at all.
Isn't it safer to change the BIOS now, so that any future problems with loading will eliminate the above?
I have made a true image of my external hard drive (I think), and also backed up my files (using acronis) on the same external hard drive as well. I think I am right in saying you have to do both. The first will reinstall windows 10 and every programme, and the backup files is the next thing to do. Is this right? The instructions could be better.
cheers
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Some comments:
If you can't get into BIOS then you need to check that you are following the correct procedure to do so - this used to be a case of pressing the right key, i.e. DEL, or F1 or F2 etc but with more modern computers using UEFI and Secure Boot, this is not always the way anymore, new Lenovo laptops for instance have a pin-hole button that you must press with the end of a paper-clip when the laptop was powered off, which then displays a boot menu from which you can choose what boot device to use and can get into the BIOS settings etc.
There is also some changes for invoking boot devices - this used to be such as pressing the F12 key to bring up a list of options, but again, this now varies according to both the hardware and the operating system. With Windows 8.1 and 10, you now use the Settings panel to select Update & Security, then Recover, then Advanced Startup - Restart now where again you will see the list of boot device options when the system restarts.
If you change the boot order in BIOS to put such as USB devices ahead of your primary internal hard drive, then be aware that if you leave a non-bootable USB device (memory stick, hard drive etc) connected and boot the system, then you will probably get an error for the operating system being missing etc.
For backing up your Windows 10 system, you need to ensure that you create an image that includes the hidden System partition (normally around 200MB when present) as well as the Windows 10 drive itself, plus any other partitions that you may have added to Windows 10 Libraries if these are on the same physical hard drive. Your files backup is only needed if you have backed up changes to the same since you performed the last full system image.
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