Can't get WinPE boot to see USB drives on ATI2015
Hello Anyone, About ready to give up on Acronis. Can't create a Boot Recovery disk that works. Running ATI2015 on Win7Pro, brand new PC. My bkup images validate ok on Windows but fail with ATI's native Boot / Recovery. Enabled the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager and tried the F11 boot and it works. Bkup images validate OK but still have no "offline" boot media that works.
Went through all the business of creating a WinPE boot and can't get it to see any USB drives, either 3.0 or 2.0.
Been fighting several days with AIK, DISM, ISO files, etc. trying to add drivers.
Anyone have a clue if they are going to fix this any time soon. IMO this is BS to have to spend so much time trying to get this to work. They should provide boot media creation that does all the driver business. I used Ghost for years and never had problems like this. It's like a giant step backwards to the 90's, when we needed to add CD ROM drivers to DOS boot disks. Only this is worse, more complicated and tinme consuming.
I didn't have these problems on ATI2014 but that was on a USB 2.0 machine so I don't know it downgrading will help on the new PC.
Would appreciate any thoughts on this.
Al,
You mentioned that F11 boot works. I would recommend the (Linux) Rescue Media, which is discussed staring in Para 8.1.1 of the user manual. Directions on how to create the bootable media are in Para 8.1.1.1. I put Linux in parentheses because the user manual does not refer to it as Linux, but it is different from the WinPE and very easy to create.
FtrPilot
Thanks for replying. I have it all working now. No issues with disk sizes, partitions or cables. Once I correctly identified and added the USB controller device driver .inf’s to the appropriate WinPE .wim file and then re-created the ATI-WinPE boot media, it all worked fine. Now when I boot from DVD, the ATI Backup Recovery app running on WinPE sees all my USB 3.0 / 2.0 drives and flash storage devices. And all my ATI2014/15 backups validate successfully.
The rest of this is a complaint. Understand if you’re not interested but it’s mainly what I’d already put together for a message to customer service. (although they probably couldn’t care less)
I’m fixed now but do still have issues with the product and will not hand over another dime for subscriptions, updates or anything until they get it together and fix some things, especially the rescue media build. I’ll be looking at other backup/recovery products in the meantime.
IMO the company doesn’t care much about retail customers. The native ATI2015 Boot Rescue Media creation has known issues or just doesn’t work. It fails to validate good backups therefore is not reliable for recovery.
So they provide an alternate under WinPE which requires customization to add device drivers in order to be usable. So retail customers have to spend many hours installing additional software and figuring out how to work the changes with AIK, WinPE, driver “packages”, command line code, etc.
This is pathetic. The whole backup & recovery process is worthless as installed “out-of-the-box” in the event that your system hard drive fails if you can’t restore from good backups or don’t have access to your storage devices when booting from external recovery media.
The Startup Recovery Manager – F11 option under Linux did work for me. Sees my storage devices and validates backups successfully but this option is of limited value, worthless with a hard drive failure.
Like most technical documentation, the Microsoft and Acronis doc that applies to configuring WinPE tells you way too much of what you don’t need to know and way too little of what you do need to know, making it difficult and time consuming to weed out the significant pieces. They assume we’re all familiar with AIK, WinPE, .wim, etc. I suspect most are not, don’t want to be and normally have no need to be.
They should fix the native ATI Boot Rescue Media application and/or, at least provide a user friendly Windows utility to configure a *.wim file for rescue media creation with your drivers.
I must have spent over 20 hours altogether getting this to work. When you pay good money for a product it should work without you having to spend many hours “fixing” it.
The WinPE customization business may be OK for corporate users. They have employees who get paid to spend their time with these things.
OK. Done with my rant.
Regards
Al
Al,
Congratulations on getting your issue(s) resolved.
You have made many excellent points in your rant. I hope someone at Acronis is paying attention.
Please log into the blog occasionally and see what's going on. You never know when your experience could help someone else.
Regards,
FtrPilot
FtrPilot,
I’ll check occasionally. There are a lot of posts / complaints around the WinPE driver problem, some saying this has been an issue for several years. I seriously doubt my complaints will influence anyone at Acronis but wanted to get my 2 cents worth posted. My experience with this is specifically for Win7Pro / ATI2015 / WinPE 6 but if I hear from anyone I may be able to help.
Regards
Al
Hello FtrPilot
Maybe you know this. On my Acronis account, I "moved" my ATO2015 activation from old pc to new. Now on the old pc it shows 29 days remaining. Do you know what happens after the 29 days expire? Will ATI be stopped from running on the old PC or is it just cut off from the subscription / updates? I really don't care because I'll be wiping the old machine clean and selling it soon but wondering what happens on my new pc when (if?) my activation expires, since I don't plan on renewing (as I mentioned) until they improve or fix a few things.
Would appreciate any info.
Regards
Al
Al,
I have no knowledge on how Acronis run their licenses when you do a swap. My best guess is they allow 30 or more days of overlap where ATI will run on both machines. The ATI2015 license, transferred to your new machine should not expire.
I do know that you can use your boot media to wipe any drive. As far as which wiping method, I recommend method 1,2, or 3. Each of these methods use 4 passes. Depending on the size of the hard drive, wiping the disk could take 24 to 48 hours.
Regards,
FtrPilot
FtrPilot
Sounds right, about the 30 day overlap. All ok as long as the license doesn't expire on the new machine. Wasn't sure about that.
Wow 24-48 hours! Acronis wiping sounds like it's CIA/NSA/FBI proof! lol. Not sure I need that level of security but good to know about it.
Thanks & Regards
Al
Personally, I use 1 pass and 3 - 30-06 bullet holes. Much faster and much more fun. But then the disk can't be used again.
If you plan on selling the computer, or giving it away, I would use 4 passes.
FtrPilot
I like the 30-06 method! lol. But agree it's best to do a secure wipe before giving or selling old PCs.
Al
Hi FtrPilot,
You're probably familiar with all this. Just some chat here. I hadn't looked at the secure wipe subject for a while and you woke up my curiosity. So I ckecked a bit for a general update. Found there's a lot of conflicting opinions on this. "The US NIST in its Guidelines for Media Sanitization of 2006 stated that “for ATA disk drives manufactured after 2001 (over 15 GB) clearing by overwriting the media once is adequate to protect the media“." Other sources expand this to include all modern drives. Then there are the rigorous extremes at the other end.
I have an old Quantum ATA drive that still had Win 2000 on it. I did a before/after test with Recuva. After a regular (long) format on Windows Recuva did not find anything. Scanned with each available action and not a trace. Personally I like more than one pass but spending 24-48 hours on the Acronis procedure is overkill for me.
Regards
Al
Al,
I believe that one pass will prevent software recovery programs from recovering any data. The extra 3 passes (required by DoD) would prevent "hardware" recovery methods, such as those used by the FBI or other government agencies.
Personally, I would be comfortable with a one pass followed by a "full" format.
Regards,
FtrPilot
FtrPilot,
That works for me too.
Regards
Al
Hi FtrPilot,
My hassle and annoyance with the business of adding drivers to WinPE for ATI2015 boot media was done and over with, moving right along with other things.
However, today I was playing on my old machine with Aomei Partition Assistant 6.0 (freeware) and created a boot disk. And what do I find? PA6.0 creates WinPE boot and includes an option for adding drivers. Check device mgr for USB controller .inf names, a few clicks and done. Boot from CD and USB drives are there. No problemo'.
Don't mean to beat a dead horse but it begs the question, how pathetic is that when this is provided in freeware and not in ATI?
No downloading and installing AIK, no DISM command line code, no .wim files, etc., etc. Jeez!
Regards
Al
Al,
Thanks for the info about Partition Assistant...also glad you were able to resolve your USB problem.
Acronis should have a team of hardware engineers dedicated to compatibility issues, especially as it relates to rescue media and WinPE. They need to make WinPE creation as user friendly as possible, with emphasis on adding drivers.
Once again, thanks for the info and thanks for checking back.
Regards,
FtrPilot
Al,
One more question...did you have your USB drive on and connected when you made your original WinPE using Acronis?
FtrPilot
FtrPilot
FtrPilot
Did not have USB external drive(s) or USB flash drive(s) connected during native or WinPE media builds but fairly certain that is not a factor. The on-board USB controller devices are what required drivers to be added.
I see your point though (possibly an auto-detect situation) similar to where ATI boot / recovery (run-time) will not see external drives unless they are already connected when booting. Many apps are the same in this respect. Ghost boot / recovery was that way also. This does not appear to be the case with either of the ATI 2015 media build options.
The boot media created by the native ATI 2015 media build (without WinPE) includes all drivers neccessary to see all my USB devices on both my old USB 2.0 machine and my new up-to-date machine. Too bad it would not validate my backups! lol.
FYI, Partition Assistant's boot media build offers a choice of WinPE or Windows To Go. Thought it interesting that is states during the dialog that Windows To Go is better than WinPE. Guess I'll have to try that next. It never ends! lol.
Regards
Al
Al,
I have downloaded and installed Partition Assistant v 6.0 Free version. I am very interested in the Windows to Go capability. I will explore Windows to Go after I upgrade to Windows 10. I am currently on windows 7, and Windows to Go requires 8.1 or 10.
So far, I am impressed with Partition Assistant. Did you use PA to modify your Acronis WinPE?
Regards,
FtrPilot
Hi FtrPilot
I'm also interested in Windows To Go but not ready to move from Win 7 to 10. Will be staying on Win 7 for a good while and will never use 8.1. It's on my wife's machine and we both hate it. Will be downgrading her's to 7 soon.
I did not use PA 6 to modify my ATI WinPE. I didn’t know about in time. I wanted to do some final checking on my old machine (XP partitions) before wiping it and still had Partition Magic 8 which is way out of date. Since going to Win 7 on my old machine I had problems getting the other, older partitions bootable for some reason. So I looked for an up-to-date partition tool and that's when I saw PA 6 and tried it. I'm impressed with it also. The GUI is very similar to PM8. Thinking maybe Aomei acquired licensing and built from PM8's basic design. It was PowerQuest first, then later bought out by Symantec. Don't think they've done anything with PM for quite some time.
But also, check out Aomei’s free WinPE Builder utility. It’s sweet. See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT4rhw9eK98 I downloaded it but haven’t installed yet. I wish I knew about it before fighting with ATI WinPE, lol.
The way I did that was first build the basic WinPE setup with AIK. It creates a folder structure including the winpe.wim and supporting files for each of 3 architectures in: C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\amd64, ia64 & x86. I determined that for my system (Win 7 64 bit) ATI2015 uses the winpe.wim from the amd64 folder in its media build. Once I determined that, I added my USB drivers to the winpe.wim in the amd64 folder, after making a backup copy in case I hosed it up. I used the DISM commands in AIK command mode to add the driver .inf.s. Once that was done I re-did the ATI – WinPE media build. It built the boot media using ...\amd64\ winpe.win which now included my drivers. It was a pain but it all worked. And I learned some new things at least.
But from now on, Aomei’s WinPE Builder looks like the only way to go. I plan to create a WinPE boot with all the drivers and some essential tools on it just to have on around for whatever need may come up. It will be very handy if/when needed.
Regards
Al
Al,
Thanks for all the good info...I am downloading Aomei’s free WinPE Builder.
Last night, against my better judgement, I upgraded to Windows 10. So far, it is running OK. I plan to check out Windows 2 go in the next couple of days. Will let you know how that goes.
Regards,
FtrPilot
FtrPilot
You're welcome. Glad to share. Will be interested to hear what you think of the Aomei PE Builder but even more about what you think of Win 10.
I'm the die-hard type I guess. I didn't move off of XP Pro to Win 7 until the bitter end when secondary support was finally terminated for XP in Apr 2014.
Dell is still selling their new PCs with Win 7 Pro installed. I think that says something, if only just that Win 10 is still a bit new. However they come with a Win 10 license so I'm free to upgrade any time if I decide to.
Regards
Al
Al,
The jury is still out on Win 10. I have 30 days from install to decide whether to go back to Win 7. As of right now, I am getting used to the user interface. The user interface is very similar to Win 7, so no real problems getting to where I want to go. Will keep you advised as I progress. If you decide to give Win 10 a go, please get in touch with me first. There are a couple of things I would recommend prior to the upgrade.
I am currently building my Win 2 Go USB. Will let you know how that goes.
Regards,
FtrPilot
FtrPilot
Hope it works out well.
I guess I'm a minimalist and stubbornly continue fighting against the never-ending bloat. I've always tried to keep the used disk space as low as possible and run as little as possible, disabling or removing any and all apps, services, files, registry items, etc that I don't need or want.
So I was encouraged to read that Windows 10 clean installed footprint is substantially smaller than Win 7's (and Windows 8.1's) and that boot time was about half. Reading more I found that this is accomplished mainly with compression. The review claims that Windows 10's "intelligent compression" does not sacrifice performance. Maybe. Of course everything varies to some degree depending on what hardware it's installed on. Eventually I'll just have to go ahead and try it like you're doing.
Anyway, look forward to your reaction, and on Win To Go also.
Regards
Al
Hi FtrPilot
FYI, could not get Aomei PE Builder to work. Was disappointed and surprised since PA 6.0's boot media build worked so well and easily. They say they're working on the problem (or a few problems). On my system, Win7 Pro SP1 64bit. Using current release, PE Builder 1.5. Did a "standard" PE boot setup to a USB flash drive only adding my USB drivers. It started to load PE then got a BSOD with error code C0000145 The application was unable to start correctly . . . There are various online posts about a problem with Win7 security update kb3045999 and removing it for this error. Also, posts on Aomei's forum about possible problems with a number of other "kb' updates.
Don't want to spend the time so I'm not getting into it. Would like to have it if/when it's fixed. Will keep an eye on it for an update or workaround.
Regards
Al