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DD11 Experiences with demo version - disappointing

Thread needs solution

I am running Windows 7 64bit. I downloaded the demo version of DD11

I have 3 partitions on one disk

1). Windows 7 64bit
2). Vista Ultimate 32bit
3). Windows XP SP3

None of the OS's know about the others i.e. if I am running W7 then Vista and XP partitions are hidden the same goes for the other two respectively

I installed DD11 on the W7 partition and that went without an issue (I also have ATIH2010 Build 7046 and Drive Monitor installed)

I ran DD11 in W7 and noticed that the status column does not display the "hidden" parameter of a partition. On DD10 there was a column that said "Pri,Act,Hid". I also do not see a simple option to unhide or hide a partition. I gather then this is to be done pay changing the partition type. That is fraught with danger as it is all to easy to select the wrong line and then what will happen? Is this correct?

I also installed OS selector and let it do its thing and the first boot of the default W7 OS caused it to pop up a "This OS is not genuine" message. Why?

I wanted to boot to the Vista partition so I selected it on a subsequent reboot and it did not boot at all. I suspect that this was due to the hidden status of the partition. What I thought was supposed to happen was that I could set the status of each partition for each OS that was available.

e.g.

To run W7 it would be set like this:

Partition 1 Active,Bootable,Primary
Partition 2 Bootable,Primary,Hidden
Partition 3 Bootable,Primary,Hidden

To run Vista it would be set like this:

Partition 1 Bootable,Primary,Hidden
Partition 2 Active,Bootable,Primary
Partition 3 Bootable,Primary,Hidden

and to run XP it would be set like this:

Partition 1 Bootable,Primary,Hidden
Partition 2 Bootable,Primary,Hidden
Partition 3 Active,Bootable,Primary

But I cannot do this as the Hidden/Active check boxes are greyed out and cannot be changed either via the boot dialogue box or when running W7 where OS selector is installed.

So how is this supposed to work? Can I get it to do what I want?

Also when I boot, the OS selector comes up with a default of 800 * 600 display but the displayed dialogue box is not large enough to display even the menu's down the left side. As I cannot use the mouse on this screen only the keyboard this makes life very difficult.

There is an option to change the display format but doing this does not affect the size of the displayed dialogue box.

Right now I have restored a previous backup and will be waiting for comments on the above.

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Do you have a copy of the BOOTWIZ.OSS file from the OSS 11 install? It sounds like you ran into the "grayed-out checkbox" bug. The fix is easy, but must be done manually.

Do the mouse and keyboard both work properly with OSS 10?

Due to the fact that OSS was originally not going to be included with DD 11, there weren't very many changes made to it (that includes bug fixes). I can only hope that Acronis will fix the problems in a future update.

The hiding/unhiding of partitions was removed from the Home version of DD. If I remember correctly, those options should be in the Advanced versions. I have no idea when they will be released.

Hi Mudcrab,

I think the mouse this is a BIOS issue (at least that is what I am told) The mouse will not work on any Acronis product where it is relying in the BIOS for communication with peripherals (Mouse/Keyboard)

I am loath to try this again at this time as I was hoping for a reason as to why the OS was seen as "Not Genuine" that was worrying.

Once I can be certain that this is not an issue or has been fixed I can try again. As I also had a disk failure and required to recover and move some partitions I have now obtained a licensed version of DD11. The demo version looked OK for most of the other options I wanted to use, but early days yet.

I too am amazed that such an important function (hide/unhide) is not included in the product.

Perhaps Acronis can enlighten us here on the plans to fix this problem. I feel a support case coming on.

I don't think I've heard anything about DD/OSS and the "Genuine" Windows problem. In just general reading, I have seen cases of Windows 7 deactivating itself or having other activation issues that seem related to Windows. I haven't had any problems in that area myself (so far).

Did you try it again to see if it happens again? Maybe it was just one of those weird things.

I too have raised objections about the features pulled from DD 11 Home. I think they're going to get a lot of complaints from people that use those features. In most cases, when you upgrade to a new version you expect the features in the current/old version to still exist. The Advanced version is the one that I want. It's the one that should be more equal to DD 10 + the new features.