MBR gets corrupted after running backup to external HDD

Ian, please take a look at post http://forum.acronis.com/forum/83366#comment-259526 which reported a similar problem with ATIH 2014 when a password protected external drive was encountered.

Did you have ATIH 2016 installed on the Dell when it was running Windows 7 (before the upgrade to Win 10)? And if so, did you test the same backup task to the same external drive without issues?

If you had no problems with ATIH 2016 on Windows 7 on the Dell, then you may want to perform a clean install of ATIH 2016 by first uninstalling it, running the Acronis Cleanup tool (link below in my signature) and then doing a fresh new install, ideally downloading a new copy of the installer from your Acronis Account.  You will need to recreate your backup tasks if doing this, unless you want to try saving the task scripts from the Scripts folder and restoring after the install.
C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts is the path but may be hidden on some systems.

Ian,

Is this happening on your laptop when pushing an image from the Windows online version of ATIH, or just after using offline bootable recovery media?

I have an ASUS T200 (EUFI only sytsem - no legacy/CSM/bios mode is available in the bios) where this sometimes occurs for me as well, but never from within the Windows online version of ATIH.  It only occurs after booting to offline bootable media.  HOWEVER, this behavior does not seem to be limited to just the ATIH bootable offline recovery media though, as booting to other WinPE environments, also can produce this behavior on this system.  Unfortunately, I have not found the exact cause or fix.  I have not had to replace the MBR, but it will often go into Windows Recovery, fail and then be fine when it starts up again.

My guess is that it has something to do with Windows 10 Fastboot and the system not truly being shutdown somewhere along the line as it is basically using hibernation for quick startup in Windows 10. 

Alternatively, if the Dell supports both legacy boot and UEFI boot, which installtion of Windows 10 was yours installed with?  By default, it should be UEFI (if the bios allows this - some bios only let you have CSM/Legacy or UEFI, some let you choose the default but allow both).

What may be happening, is that your system is UEFI, but supports CSM .  When you press F12 (or whatever button on the Dell) to get to your boot override menu, you may be selecting the CSM/Legacy mode for the Acronis Bootable media which is 32 bit.  Instead, try looking for the UEFI entry and booting to that, which is 64 bit.  Not sure if this will help at all, but worth a shot.

Thanks, Steve. No was a clean install on the Dell after the upgrade to Win 10. Previously under 7 was running Symantec SSR which was not compatible with Win 10 at the time of upgrade. Can confirm the external USB HDD does not have password protect.

Bobbo,

It is running the standalone version of ATIH 16 and using an offline external USB HDD. Not using hibernation or the option within the ATIH software to shutdown after backup. Straight backup. Manually closing the app when backup ompleted succesfully  Device keeps running fine until I do a reboot or shutdown and reboot (meaning do a total shut down through Win 10 then powering up with the 'Start' button).

There is never an option after reboot to select the boot device after this. Goes straight to recovery mode. Haven't interupted the startup before boot to select device to boot. In fact guessing it wouldn't be able to see anything cos I need to recover using bootfix rebuildbcd fixmbr fixboot

Ian,

Yours sounds pretty similar to my situation.  When I close out of my bootable media (again, not just related to ATIH bootable media though), I immediately get this issue and Windows goes into recovery mode, fails, reboots, does a checkdisk and then boots up fine.  I've run chkdsk on the drive numerous times as well as WD Data lifeguard and spinrite and the drive always comes up clean.  Just curious, but what kind of hard drive is in your Dell - mine is a 64GB eMMC flash hard drive and I have hunch that is where some of the incompatibility is coming from.

In your case, I'd be curious to know if your system behavior is the same when launching the ATIH bootable recovery media in the Linux version and the WinPE version, or if it only occurs when using one or the other.

500gb SATA, Bobbo. Laptop boots fine from the recovery USB media I have created. Just can't understand why the software needs to intefere with the MBR on the drive. I can't tell if it does on my Thinkpad but all I know is that the Thinkpad boots fine after running a backup on it.

To my knowledge, Acronis does not actually tweak the MBR in any way when booting to offline bootable recovery media.  ATIH bootable media is run completely outside of the OS and designed to backup the data on the drive, not modify files on the disk.  The only change in ATIH would be the rearranging of the Partitions during deployment as it does move the MSR to the 1st partition, then recovery as the second, efi as the third and the OS as the 4th. This does not change the MBR either though.

Apparently, something is definitley happening in your situation, but I am guessing it is actually the bios or something else that is having trouble adjusting after booting to the bootable media and then rebooting.  There should be no changes to the OS or MBR occurring from within Acronis though.  The strangest part I can't wrap my head around is that after using the bootable media to create your backup image and you close out of the bootable application, it then seems to reboot and the OS loads.  It's not until you then reboot or shutdown that this behavior occurs.  

Again, if you're able to, I would see if this behavior is consistent using the Linux bootable reocvery media (the default Acronis uses) as well as the WinPE bootable recovery media.  As far as the F12 menu goes, I was suggesting that when first launching your bootable media to start the recovery process, that you use F12 and not let it pick up on it's own.  Then make sure you are using the UEFI option and not the default legacy option to start the USB drive with the Acronis bootable media.  Your system may be booting the USB in legacy mode (do you see the Acronis menu with colors and graphics to pick what you want to run... Acronis, UR, etc.......... OR, is it the UEFI menu where it's just white text with a black background where you make your selection and then it boots into the Acronis graphical interface?)

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/master_boot_record.htm

10. Once the BIOS finishes what it needs to do, it begins searching for a drive to boot an operating system. All BIOS's contain a setting that controls this search sequence for a boot drive. Most are set to first look for a bootable floppy disk, and if one is not found then proceed to a hard disk, which is usually the C: drive. Some BIOS's permit you to boot from your CD-ROM drive or other devices such as a SCSI (Small Computer System Interface), depending on the boot sequence selected. Once the BIOS identifies its target boot drive, the it looks for boot information to start the operating system boot process. If it is searching a hard disk, it looks for a master boot record at cylinder 0, head 0, sector 1, the first sector on the disk. If it is searching a floppy disk, it looks at the same address on the floppy disk for a volume boot sector.
 

11. Once the boot sector is found and its contents or data verified, the BIOS starts the process of booting the operating system by using the information in the boot sector. If this is a floppy disk boot sector, the information is read into memory at location 0000:7c00. INT 19 goes to memory location 0000:7c00 to continue the process. If no boot sector is found on the floppy drive, INT 19 moves to the next bootable drive in the list provided by the motherboard BIOS, usually a hard drive, and then attempts to read the MBR. If a Master Boot Record is found, it is read into memory at location 0000:7c00 and INT 19 jumps to memory location 0000:7c00 the same as was the case with the floppy. At this point, the BIOS attempts to move control of the computer from the BIOS to the actual operating system.

Next, the small program in the Master Boot Record will attempt to locate an active (bootable) partition in the hard drives partition table. If such a partition is found, the boot sector of that partition is also read into memory at location 0000:7C00 and then MBR program itself jumps to memory location 0000:7C00. Keep in mind that each operating system has its own boot sector format. The next step involves the small program in the boot sector locating the first part of the operating system's kernel loader program, or in some cases the kernel itself or perhaps a boot manager program, and read then that into memory. For you Windows NT and Windows 2000 fans, this kernel loader is referred to as NTLDR. You will find a description of the DOS boot process here.
 

12. If no boot device of any type can be found, the system will display an error message and stop. The specific error message is depends on the BIOS developer and/or the computer's manufacturer, and can be anything from a rather clear "No boot device" to the very cryptic "NO ROM BASIC - SYSTEM HALTED". This will also happen if you have a bootable hard disk partition but forget to set it active. Believe it or not, you can partition a drive, format it and install the operating system and never realize that there is problem until the first start of that operating system occurs.

This entire process is referred to as a "cold boot" (since the machine was off, or cold, when it started). A "warm boot" also known as a "soft boot" is the same thing except it occurs when the machine is rebooted using the Ctrl + Alt + Del keys. In this case the POST is skipped and the boot process continues at roughly step 8 above. As a side note, INT 19 is also called when the CTRL-ALT-DEL keys are used. On most systems, Ctrl + Alt + Del causes a soft-boot or shorten version of the POST to be executed before INT 19 is called.

Sorry I am probably not being clear. My problem occurs when I boot the laptop as normal from the internal hard disk. I launch Acronis then run a backup to a USB hard drive. Backup completes. Then the next time I boot the laptop from the internal hard drive it fails by not finding the MBR and I have to recover all this by booting from the Win 10 utilities DVD and using the command prompt to run DOS commands to recover the boot record.  Nothing to do with booting from a Acronis created bootable device. I never have this problem (shutting down, restarting) unless I run an Acronis backup on this unit.

OK - yes, I was way off - I have no idea why launching Acronis from within Windows would impact the MBR in anyway - and it shouldn't!  I've not heard of this happening until now. 

I don't know if this will resolve the issue at all, but I would try try completely removing ATIH and installing fresh
 

01) Remove ATIH and any add-ons and Universal Restore from control panel

02) Run the ATIH cleanup tool in my signature (it works for 2016 too).  Please be sure to note the warnings about removing secure zone first if you have it enabled.  Also note the registry keys to manually check after running the cleanup tool as well!!!

03) Reboot (don't skip this).

04) After reboot, log back in and make sure these directories no longer exist... If they do, delete them and reboot again (don't skip the reboot if you manually delete these - the reboot updates the registry values)

C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis     C:\Program Files (x86)\Common\Acronis     C:\Program Files\Acronis     C:\Program Files\Common\Acronis     C:\ProgramData\Acronis

(Hopefully, you are still not having any MBR issues at this point when rebooting...)

05) Reinstall ATIH 2016 v6027 by downloading from your online account (don't use a previous installer as it may be older or corrupt).  

06) Once downloaded, run it by right clicking and using the "run as administrator" option to give it the highest privileges possible during install.  

07) After install, launch ATIH and register your license key.

Don't create a backup job yet, but reboot to see if the MBR issue has returned or not (hopefully not).  If no issues occur, log in and run a backup and reboot and see if the MBR issue is back or not.

If it does return, this would be very strange indeed adn I would strongly suggest opening a support case with Acronis technical support.  I would hope that this would be covered without the need for PPI, but let's try the clean uninstall removal and test reboots along the way and see how things go before going that route. 

Many thanks, Bobbo, and I will follow your instructions in the week and report back.

Hi Bobbo,

I followed above instructions to the letter and unfortunately the same. After backup ran successfully and I did a reboot it failed to boot and I had to run the bootrec DOS commands to recover. I then wondered if it was something to do that Win 7 was still there after the upgrade to Win 10 so I removed the old WIN 7 using WIN 10 disk cleanup. Uninstalled Acronis and reinstalled following all the steps you laid out. Recreated the backup task, ran it and it ran successfully. Rebooted and same problem. Any other ideas?

Many thanks

Ian

I'm out of ideas - I will ping the other MVP's to see if they can offer anything else.  What are the full boot repair commands you're using and what order are you entering them?

I dont' think this should make a difference since it does seem to boot fine up until a backup is run and then you're having to do this.

Thanks.

bootrec /RebuildBcd

bootrec /fixMbr

bootrec /fixboot

I really want to get Acronis running on this unit (bought 3 licenses) but in the meantime have reinstalled Veritas SSR (Left ACronis on).

Thanks for all your help so far

Hello Ian,

I do not have an answer for you for your problem but I do have some comments.  Your experience is exactly why I do not perform OS system disk backups while that disk is booted.  Instead, I boot the machine using the recovery media and perform the backup while the disk being backed remains in an inactive state.  Although the chances for corruption like yours is very low I say why take the chance?  It is just not worth it.  Additionally restores should be performed this same way.  If you perform either operation, backup or restore of the system disk while that disk is Live (booted) you risk corruption.

A few questions for you here, 

When was the last time you updated the bios on this machine?  You might consider doing that if you have not done so already as your current bios may not be compatible with Win 10.

Have you tried this: Perform a backup task and when completed reboot the machine however, instaed of letting the machine boot into Windows, boot into the bios instead using what ever keyboard key or key combo is required to do that.  Once in the bios select the Boot tab or section and look to see what device the bios shows as first selected to boot from.  Is the first to boot your OS system disk?

Can you post screenshots of your system disk and your backup target disks using the Windows snipping tool to capture Disk Management screens of these disks?  Doing so might give some clue as to what the issue might be.

Post back your replies and hopefully we can be of further help.

Just to get things out of the way: you are not trying to use the Acronis Startup REcovery Manager, are you? Is there any disk encryption software, or disk security software in play here?

Hi Enchantech,

I am guessing Acronis backs up in shadow mode so should not be a problem with backing up open files etc but when I do run a backup I always try and give whatever software is doing it a chance by not having any apps etc open. Yes I did check the BIOS yesterday and have the boot order to CD/DVD, USB device then OS disk. BIOS is the latest release for machine model and no other app causes problems. I installed Veritas SSR R2 with SP4 and tested that by doing a full backup then rebooted and no problems.

I think someone earlier said ACronis does not write anything to the boot sector but guess in some way is corrupting it.

Hi Pat L,

No disk encryption software or any security software . Just running a straight backup using the PC native client software. I have it installed on my other PC (Lenovo Thinkpad T510i) and no problems at all.

No Acronis Startup Recovery Manager either?

Ian,

I note that your BIOS boot order is DVD, USB, then OS disk.  Please confirm that the USB Hard disk is disconnected prior to rebooting your machine.  If I set up my BIOS exactly like yours, and have a USB hard disk attached, I get a Boot Rec missing error.  I then disconnect the USB drive and the computer boots, no problems.

FtrPilot

Nope not activated

FtrPilot,

I confirm that I only connect the USB drive when the laptop is fired up and just before I invoke Acronis. As you say, if I inadvertently have a non-bootable USB device connected at power up I get a NTLDR missing error and disconnect the device and reboot and all fine.

Is there SSD disk caching or acceleration? Is it turned on?

It is a SATA

What's your SSD - if Samsung, are you using Rapid mode or something similar with another manufacturer disk?  Although I liked the read/write speeds reported with Rapid Mode turned on (3000Mb/s +) I didn't see any realworld performance and found my system to be much more "finicky" and ended it up disabling it and things have been much more stable since then.  

It is a 500GB SATA HD. What I think I will do at some point is do a vanilla build of Win 10 Home and try again. It is currently an upgrade to Win 10 from the original Win 7 OEM. In the meantime will do the monthly backup via Veritas SSR. I do appreciate everyones advice so far.

HI Ian, if you're still interested in trying to get to the bottom of it, still happy to keep digging.  We were wondering if this might be a hybrid drive?  Could you provide the drive make/model so I could check into the specs on it more?

Also, don't know if you have a spare drive you could use, but would be curious if you imaged the current one and restored to another different one, if the behavior would still be there after that or not.  If it is, of course you'd always have your original drive to put back in, but if it did stop the issue from coming back, it might point to an issue with the drive.  

Just speculating, but if you have the time or desire to try at all, I'd be interested to hear back. 

Also, did you ever have a dual boot setup or multiple Windows OS installed at the same time?

I just noticed the order of the commands you've been running (which should be fine).  However, instead of using the bcedit command, try skipping it and go for:

/ScanOs

/FixMbr

/FixBoot

or add it to the end of the commands instead of first.  It's also recommended that if this doesn't fix things that you export the old one (just in case), completeley delete it and then recreate it.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/927392

Bootrec.exe options

The Bootrec.exe tool supports the following options. Use the option that's appropriate for your situation.
 

/FixMbr

This option writes a Windows 7 or Windows Vista-compatible MBR to the system partition. It does not overwrite the existing partition table. Use this option when you must resolve MBR corruption issues, or when you have to remove nonstandard code from the MBR.

/FixBoot

This option writes a new boot sector to the system partition by using a boot sector that's compatible with Windows Vista or Windows 7. Use this option if one of the following conditions is true:

• The boot sector was replaced with a nonstandard Windows Vista or Windows 7 boot sector.
• The boot sector is damaged.
• An earlier Windows operating system was installed after Windows Vista or Windows 7 was installed. In this situation, the computer starts by using Windows NT Loader (NTLDR) instead of Windows Boot Manager (Bootmgr.exe).

/ScanOs

This option scans all disks for installations that are compatible with Windows Vista or Windows 7. It also displays the entries that are currently not in the BCD store. Use this option when there are Windows Vista or Windows 7 installations that the Boot Manager menu does not list.

/RebuildBcd

This option scans all disks for installations that are compatible with Windows Vista or Windows 7. Additionally, it lets you select the installations that you want to add to the BCD store. Use this option when you must completely rebuild the BCD store.

Note Use the Bootrec.exe tool to troubleshoot a "Bootmgr Is Missing" error. If rebuilding the BCD store doesn't resolve the startup issue, you can export and delete the BCD store and then run this option again. By doing this, you make sure that the BCD store is completely rebuilt. 

To do this, type the following commands at the Windows RE command prompt:

• bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup
• c:
• cd boot
• attrib bcd -s -h -r
• ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
• bootrec /RebuildBcd

Ian,

Taking note of your boot order as you outlined above you might try this simple test.  Run a backup task as you normally would. Now restart your PC but boot into your bios instead of allowing the machine to attempt to boot Windows.  Once in the bios setup select the boot section and in the boot order list disable all entries except the HDD from the list.  Now save and exit the bios and see if the PC boots normally.

If that works I would recommend resetting your CMOS which will revert your bios back to original default settings so if you have changed or customized these settings in any way you should make note of them so that you can change them back once your CMOS has been reset.

Thanks Enchantech. I am finding it difficult to grab the unit from my partner for a long period of time (to do a full backup takes about 90 minutes) to test now and she has run out of patience :) so I think I mentioned earlier I have put on Veritas SSR which works fine and no problem when rebooting afterwards. Will do a vanilla build of Win 10 at some point and see if it works and advise. It is only running this software that the problem occurs and only on this Dell. Works fine on my Thinkpad. I do appreciate all the advice you and others have given me to try.

Ian,

Create a system report while your USB storage disk is connected and post it here in the forum.  The information in the disk.txt file in the the system report may have some clues as to what is going on.

https://kb.acronis.com/content/56652

When you have time to run another backup create another system report immediately after the backup completes and post it here too.

Thanks again for your time.  You're going to think I'm a real dodo but I'm an ATI neophote and have some questions about your instructions:

1. I know that ATI is Acronis True Image, but what's ATIH? I'm not sure what you mean by removing things from the Control Panel
2. Not sure what, "Run the ATIH cleanup tool in my signature" is.
3. I've been unsing ATI 2015.
4. What's, "MBR?

Again, sorry I'm such an ATI neophyte.

Richard

Okay, I unistalled and followed directions to reinstall.  That seemed to work, but I Opened the program and some of the backups do appear now and some of them don't. It is displaying my E drive, and that backup is working and picked up on the backup I made yesterday with new versions. ****

The list is displaying several C-Drives i.e. full_B5, B6, B7, B8 basically all the same.  I don't think I made all of these, maybe just one of them.  All of them are coming up to reconfigure.  I used the B5, and it worked so I deleted the B6, B7, B8, and there were also so B4s in the diretory, but not in the list that I deleted.  So I deleted the B4s in the directory.  Now I just have B5s in the directory.  Looks good!

The list is not displaying a backup for my Y, or D drives.  I am going to add them back as new backups.

I have 4 drives C 1TB system files etc., D 1TB project files, Y 2TB media files, E 2 TB audio/video files

My plan is to start fresh again and see what happens.  I am nervous about this as I don't want to lose anything should one of my drives happen to die while I am tryigt to figure it all out. 

I have 3 USB drives to back up to an M drive 2TB, N Drive 4TB, and an O drive 5TB. 

I have been using Incremental, and delete backups older than 7 days as I don't want to run out of space.  I am never sure if I should use Incremental or Decremental.  I like Incremental because it is smaller and faster, but will I have a problem recovering files if I am deleting backups older than 7 days as it says if you lose any backups you won't be able to restore files?  Any recomendations are much appreciated.

I am beginning to think that Acronis is more of a problem than a solution, and I wonder if I can just backup through windows or something else. I have been using it since 2010, and I always have problems, and the registration is a hassle, plus the website is confusing.  I do appreciate help of the Acronis forums, but it seems like you get very little help from Acronis itself.

Thanks for your input.  Sorry for the long detailed post.

Richard,

I have closed this problem now because will rebuild the laptop with a clean Win 10 build but:

1. I don't know what 'H' stands for so maybe someone else can advise you. The Contral Panel is where you can access installed programmes and amend/delete.

2. Steve had posted a link to the Acronis Cleanup Tool in a link under his signature

3. 'Unsing' is a typo and should have been 'using'

4 MBR is the Master Boot Record on a disk

What's, "because will rebuild the laptop with a clean Win 10 build "?

He's equating the issue to an underlying Win 7 to Win 10 upgrade with Acronis installed as well and is hoping that a fresh install will get everythign working in order.  For the amount of time he's been working on this, I would do he same (although I'd take an image of my system 'as is" in case I wanted to keep it before clean installing Win 10 again. 

I think you meant, "Programs and Features" because I am certainly familiar with that.

Richard

I already uninstalled Acronis and you didn't say anything about reinstalling Win 10!

I'm not sure how I would have taken an image of my system because Acronis wouldn't do anything.

This is turning into a real mess.  I'm surprised that Acronis would have done such a horrible job preparing for the customers upgrading to Win 10.

Richard, there's no requirement to reinstall Windows 10 if you don't want to - Ian was the OP on this thread and you've piggy-backed onto it - as far as he's concerned, his problem will be resolved this way, but he was considering it anyway due to other anomolies with the Windows 10 upgrade.  

There are risks with any software, OS and/or combination of both when upgrading - many can upgrade just fine (from Windows 7/8/8.1 to Win 10 and/or from Acronis earlier versions to 2016).  However, others run into issues because there original system had underlying problems before the upgrades and those can be any number of reasons as each person installs software and manages their OS completely different from everyone else.

For those that have upgraded to Windows 10 from another version and/or are having issues with Acronis, at a minimum, try the clean uninstall/reinstall method of Acronis and that usually is all you need to do.  Ian, is having a far different issue outside of Acronis, but seems to be related where he can't boot after running it, but that is something I have never heard of and the underlynig problems is probably tied to his OS build - although triggered by Acronis.

For me - and this is just me and my preference, I also do a fresh build when a new OS comes out because of these types of issues with applicatoins and the OS itself.  Upgrades can and do work, but are more likley to cause problems down the road.  It's less time consuming for me to build from scratch then to trouble shoot for hours on end and then rebuild at some point again.  It's not for everyone, but just something I've come to accept as I deploy and repair multiple PC's (most without Acronis, that have these same issues).

So far, the clean install seems to be working for me.

I just did a new installation as suggested by this forum and so far it seems to be working.  Thank God for this Forum.  Acronis support is a joke.

One more quick thing, I installed ATI on WIN 8.1 then upgraded to 10, I haven't used 7 in over a year.

Thanks,

Richard

Hello All,

We will try to reproduce this issue with Acronis True Image 2016 on our side. We may well miss some specifics of the environment, so if anybody will observe MBR corruption problem, please use "Send feedback" feature and send us a system report before doing clean reinstallation.

Regards,

Slava

I upgraded to 2016 and it works now, thank you.