Installation fails

Bob, if the automatic update from 6569 to 6571 has failed for you, then you may need to perform a clean install of the new build version, while also ensuring that you either disable or configure any security programs to allow the Acronis software to install correctly without interference.

Perform a clean install of ATIH 2016

First uninstall the program via the Control Panel (or use an uninstaller such as Revo).

Run the Acronis Cleanup Tool (link in my signature below), then restart the computer.
Note: The KB document for the Cleanup Tool refers to checking for entries in the Windows registry - I have ignored this step on the occasions I have used it with no detriment, though if making changes to the registry, I strongly advise either exporting the registry before the change(s), or create a System Restore point, or image the drive for protection.

Reinstall the ATIH software (download a fresh copy from your Acronis Account if needed or if you don't have the latest build version installer).  Run the install as an Administrator (right-click on the installer to take this option).

Note 1: The cleanup tool will remove all your backup tasks and task history.  If you want to protect this information, then open C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\ in Windows Explorer - this may be hidden on some systems - if so, go to the Folder option in the View pane and enable hidden files & folders).

Save a copy of the Database and Scripts folders to another location to restore back later.

Note 2: In order to restore the above folders & contents, you must stop all Acronis Services & Programs else you will encounter locked files in the Database folder.

Thanks Steve,

tried what you suggested but it didn't work. So I paid a fee for support on an app I bought only 6 months ago, which is really poor service. The guy did a bit more registry stuff and it installed. But he froze my mouse and keyboard and changed other settings so I am very unhappy. I've spent about 5 hours fiddling when I have other stuff to do.

I've been using True Image since about version 8 and it has always been flaky.  I only do simple PC backups - nothing fancy - but there is always something that doesn't work. As an optimist I always hope the next version will be ok, but it never is.  Acronis used to be very good on support, but now cutting it off at 30 days says a lot - guess they get such a volume of people with their rotten software faults they can only keep up with a few.  My mind is made up that I won't pay for poor support again - if it breaks, it goes in the bin!

Dear Steve Smith,

Trying to update Acronis True Image 2016, with the latest build, I received the message, Update Failed and in the details section the message Access Denied appears, which is similar to some other users.

I bought the product in March 13, 2016. At that time, my PC operated with Windows 7 Pro.

I did a full back up, (two internal disks) and in March 25, 2016, I upgraded my PC to Windows 10 Pro, since it was a free offer from Microsoft Corp.

I saved the back up in an external hard drive. I connect the drive only for back -ups. Then I keep it inside its package.

I had performed another two or three back-ups, which were incremental ones, although the screen showed a larger amount of data.

After the installation of Windows 10 Pro, I expected that the second back up it would be a full one, since I operated a new OS. However the backup was my first incremental one.

I don't know if the above datails is something useful. Do I need to delete all the previous backups and before applying the Clean Utility, to perform a full system backup ?

Do I have to do any additional work before I proceed with the solution you mentioned, near the end of your message to Mr. Craig?

Thank you in advance

John Kanellopoulos

Hello John,

I would recommend that you follow the steps I outlined in my first response in this thread and perform a clean install of ATIH 2016 on your Windows 10 system to get the Acronis program installed and working again.

You should not delete any of your backups until such time as you have Acronis working again.

Once all is working, then I would recommend creating a new backup task to create a new backup of your computer disks with Windows 10 and write this to your external hard disk drive in a new folder, assuming that you have sufficient free disk space to hold the new backup.  

When you have the new backup, then you can use the options in the Acronis GUI  to remove the settings for the old Windows 7 backup task, then when you need to free more space on your external disk drive, you can delete the old backup images.  
Note: You should delete both the full and incremental images as the incremental images cannot be used on their own without the full backup image, though you could keep the full image if you wanted and had the space for it.

Dear Sir,

Thank you very much for your instructions sent to me. When I will perform the required steps to solve the problem, I will notify you again.

Best regards

John Kanellopoulos

My prior experience with update build 6569 turned into a lengthy support exchange and I finally was told to uninstall the current ATI and then download and install the newer full ATI version.  Build 6569 had installed fine on two desktops but the Sony VAIO laptop kept coming up with Access Denied until I did the uninstall/new install while copying some folders to keep the settings and backup history.  Not a pleasant experience as it took hours of support and effort.

Now here we go again with build 6571 - I only attempted the update on one desktop and it failed as many others reported with "Access Denied".  This was the same problem with 6569!!

From a consumer/user point of view these are unacceptable outcomes for updates.  From the little I read about this 6571 update it addresses a Console problem I do not have so why must I go through all these pains to update only to experience failures and be advised to uninstall/new install again?

If every new update forces one to do a complete replacement of a working product then I overrated Acronis and now regret recommending it to customers and other users.

While you folks doing support are trying your best to resolve these issues it isn't comforting to get the same old strategy of users having to go through so much effort and frustration with failed updates.

Some products automatically remove the old and install the new without user intervention beyond approving the effort.  Acronis has been around long enough to get a good repuation for backup integrity but these failures are a black eye on the product AND the update experience.

I am passing on the 6571 update because of the failure on one desktop this time ( I have 3 PCs and 3 licenses, been a user since 2009 and installed Acronis on a few customer systems).  These kind of failures cause users to think about finding a more stable product with update integrity.

I am normally diligent on keeping OS and programs updated but Acronis 2016 will not be updated and before I pay for any more products from Acronis I will be shopping other backup solutions and that is a shame for both the consumer and the Acronis company.  You can do better and you should make it up to the user for the grief we get with updates.  

I do like the backup results and the user interface is greatly improved but these updates suck so far and so no more  Acronis recommendations from me to others.  Getting the picture now?  You keep shooting yourselves in the foot you end up lame, in a wheelchair or left by the wayside as users move away.

Please forward my regrets to the management team - they need to know the product updates are problematic and are making an unnecessary risk to Acronis future sales.

El Banko, please use the Acronis Feedback tool included in the Help section of the program GUI to forward your regrets to the Acronis management team along with your comprehensive comments about these upgrade issues.

Dear El Banko,

Since I am a medium level user, I really hesitate to follow the instructions mentioned, in order to solve the problem.

During March 2016, I upgraded my operating system from WIN 7 PRO to WIN 10 PRO.

Pressing the Upgrade button, Microsoft Corp. notified my that during the upgrade proccess, my computer will restart and shut down several times. NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS.

Windows 10 Pro installed perfect on my computer, within 45 minutes.

The question is why Acronis can't do the same thing?

On the other hand, Acronis True Image and generally, the Backup and Restore Suite of Acronis was ranked as the 1st choice, i.e., the best product, (Top Ten Backup Applications). That was the reason for buying Acronis True Image 2016. I believe that Acronis has millions of customers.

Going through the Help Files of the above application, which seems to be a robust one, I found myself far behind to understand or know everything and be adapted easily to the application's features, not to mention the

Possibly, there exist thousands of customers, who applied the Clean Utility solving their problems, without making any comment in the forum.

I'm thinking to call a friend who knows more than I, because making changes to Windows Registry makes me feel unsafe.

Since the comments on the forum increase, I will wait a few weeks before I call that friend hor help, and have the solution KB article, already printed for going on.

Since you have five computers you may be a professional in IT field. In that case, only people of advanced level knowledge may help you.

Best regards

John Kanellopoulos

John, thank you for your further comments above.

With regard to the comparison with the Microsoft Upgrade of Windows 7 to Windows 10 going smoothly and only taking 45 minutes, then I have to tell you that you were very fortunate that that was the case.

I personally have upgraded a lot of computers to Windows 10 and have been called to resolve problems for other computers which have been upgraded automatically to Windows 10.  Most of the upgrades did go smoothly like your own, but not all of them - in several cases the computer being upgraded was left totally unusable and had to be reset back to the factory delivered state because the user had no backup to use.

I would like to see all Acronis upgrades run smoothly and give none of these problems, but the reality is that not all computer systems are identical, they run different programs and applications, have different hardware and settings, use different security programs.  The majority do go smoothly and we never hear about them here in the forum but those that don't do get reported here and as with most forums are out of proportion to the bigger picture.

John, for what it's worth, I don't check for the registry settings anymore when using the cleantool.  It's only a recommednation to make sure those keys do get cleaned up, but every time I've used it, it has taken care of them just fine.

The first 3 Windows 10 upgrades I did all failed.  In fact, it was coming as a Windows update, would download the 5Gb installer, get to about 90% complete checking the system and then would abort the upgrade and start over with the full download and it did this over and over and over.  I finally found the Microsoft Media Creation tool and ran that instead and it went pretty well after that.  Even then, I found issues with the system stability in general and ended up rebuildign all of my systems from scratch (and one again after that for other weird issues with the App store telling me it needed an app to open itself and not being able to use any Windows apps).

I have to agree with Steve that upgrades are a roll of the dice.  Many applications that don't need low-level OS access like direct access to drivers, Microsoft VSS, etc. upgrade just fine because the upgrades are self-contained to just that application.  Acronis is really embedded into the OS and depends on many OS services being in tip-top shape already (VSS is probably the biggest culprit of failed backups).  

I'm not going to make excuses for the bugs in Acronis, but the overall health of the OS can be a key factor in the health of Acronis.  Often times, failing services like VSS will probably go undetected until a backup product like Acronis, which relies on it by default, are put into use.  

El Banko, 

As for the upgrades continuing to fail you and others, I can't really say what the issue is.  I have upgraded 5 systems without issue.  However, I also make sure to download the full upgrade installer from my account instead of letting it happen while the app is in use.  I also reboot before upgrading to make sure any pending Microsfot updates or other application updates are committed to the registry first.  I then launch the installer by right clicking and "run as administrator" to give it the highest access possible.  It may seem like a lot of work instead of just letting the app update, but I also follow this process for other applications as well as it provides better overall health and stability for the applications and/or OS in many cases.  

If you do settle on another backup solution that works better for you - go for it.  Keeping your data safe and having an easy way to do so is the most important.  I have found that other backup solutions work out of the box just fine too.  HOwever, over time, they also have issues after applicaiton upgrades, updates adn OS upgrades occur with them being insalled.  I have had database corruption in Acronis, but also with Retrospect, Crashplan, and even Windows backups.  It's not really a matter of "if", but "when".  Hopefully though, the when is a long way off and the occurence is not very often. 

Dear Steve Smith, as well as, Dear Bobbo_3COX1,

Thank you both of you for your comments you have written above. It is obvious that both of you, as MVP'S

you have the qualities of determination, commitment, experience, knowledge, devotion and wisdom for anything you offer in the forum. People like you keep the whell turning.

You are here to help for solution of problems to all users, who need you.

And our first embarrassment we feel, when something goes wrong, turns into a determination and effort to solve our problem.

We owe this to you and we feel glad and grateful to all of you.

I promise you to keep going.

I send you my greetings from Athens, Greece.

John Kanellopoulos

Dear Steve Smith,

I have not tried the suggested steps to install the new build, yet.

The Acronis Drive Monitor utility informs me, that the danger of my hard drives failure is imminent.

I intend to buy two new ones internal hard drives, one 500GB and the other 1 TERA, identical in capacity to those in use.

Do I have to do a backup for the two drives collectively, or to do a disk image for each one drive separately?

What I have to do for making my whole PC to work, by removing the old disks, installing the new ones and start the migration process?

Do I have, first, to follow the steps for installing the new build?

Thank you

John Kanellopoulos

John, if you do not have a working version of ATIH 2016 on your computer, then you will need to resolve that problem with the instructions I provided in post #1 before trying to make backups of your potentially failing drives.

For the replacement drives, I would recommend making separate backups of the 500GB and 1TB drives so that you can replace these separately. Assuming that one of these drives is your Windows OS drive, and the other drive is perhaps a Data drive, then these can be approached in different ways.

For the Windows OS drive, you can either connect the new replacement drive to your computer and restore the backup image to it from within Windows using ATIH, or else, you can use the Acronis bootable Rescue Media (on DVD or USB stick) to boot the computer then restore the backup to the new drive with it installed in place of the failing drive.  For both methods, you need to remove the failing OS drive and replace it with the new drive.

For the Data drive, you can do the same as with the OS drive, but you should be able to do everything from within Windows with the ATIH GUI.  You could also possibly just connect the new data drive and copy all your files across from the old drive providing you have no installed programs on that drive that could be locked by Windows.

Gentlemen,  Thank you for your patience and I hope some forgiveness for my terse comments above.  I was obviously frustrated with the failure(s).

I write today to let you know I managed to get all three PCs (2 desktops and 1 laptop) updated to 6571 today.

The laptop went without a problem and so I tried my Primary desktop and it went Ok as well.  

Back to this months problem child - the secondary desktop.  I launched Acronis as Admin. and went to Accounts where I could trigger the update. On this system each time I tried the update it made the screen blacken (while the other two just flashed it black and came back) for some time, when the screen came back the update continued and then opened File Explorer (this was not the same as the Primary or laptop update experience) again and after a while the update FAILED once again with Access Denied.

A dim bulb in my head lit up - so I UNINSTALLED AVAST, rebooted and tried again - this time the UPDATE WAS SUCCESSFUL!!  I cannot say with certainty that Avast had been the problem since the prior update 6569 went just fine last month on that same PC with Avast installed.  Last month (6569) it was the laptop that would not complete and Avast was not on that unit.  Go figure.

On the problem PC Windows Defender activated to replace Avast, Acronis is up to date on all 3 PCs and I am once agian a happy camper.   I do like Avast but have run into a couple of issues along the way that got worked out.   So MAYBE Avast was denying access, maybe not.

Thank you for your comments sent to me on my Post above - you gentlemen are greatly appreciated as John K. pointed out.  Please know that my 'rant' was not intended in any way to slight you or your work.  As I said last month you guys make a real difference for users and we need to let you know you are much appreciated.  Thanks You and good vibes to each of you.  Cheers.  Hope you all have a great weekend.

FIN.

El Banko, thank you for the positive comments, glad to hear that you have all three of your computers upgraded.

With regards to Avast (or any other security programs) it is recommended to whitelist the Acronis program / folders within the security program, i.e. add to the list of exclusions, treat as a trusted program etc.

Dear Steve Smith,

Thank you for the information provided, about the procedure I have to follow for my hard drives replacement.

By the way, reading the new post from the user El Banko, I have just used it as a hint to solve the problem of the repeated unsuccessful attemps for the installation of Acronis True Image 2016, new build.

I disabled Norton Internet Security choosing the UNTIL THE NEXT REBOOT, option.

Subsequently, I turned on the Windows Defender in order to have some protection.

I run Acronis True Image 2016. The application opened and the rectangle for the new release appeared. I followed the application's steps. The new build installed successfully.

Thanks to your guidance and the hint from El Banko my Acronis is now updated.

Best Regards

John Kanellopoulos

John, thank you for the further feedback and confirmation of the need to suspend Norton Internet Security to allow the ATIH 2016 upgrade to be installed successfully.  This has been the case for other users of NIS or other security programs (Avast, Bitdefender...)

Glad to hear of the success too. AV programs seem to be impacting these installs quite a bit more since the versions past 6027.  I've gotten into the habit of whitelisting all of the Acronis directories just to be sure.  I also have gotten in the habit of downloading the installers from my account so that I can right click and "run as administrator" to be sure they have the highest rights when installing.  Interestingly enough... in this forum post:  https://forum.acronis.com/forum/119850, some of them had success after launching ATI with "run as administrator" first.  Even though logged in with an admin account, doing that little extra step, still gives some additional access rights not available under an admin account because of UAC.  I am going to cross reference this thread in that post as well since the failing installs could be related to either one, or both of these issues.

FYI:  folders to whitelist in AV programs:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis        C:\Program Files (x86)\common\Acronis      C:\Program Files\Acronis        C:\Program Files (x86)\common\Acronis              C:\programdata\Acronis

I am also having a problem installing the new Build 6571.  My question is:  Can I uninstall Acronis 2016  and then re-install on the same computer without

having to buy it the second time.  I purchased Acronis True Image 2016 in March of this year for one computer.

HI Robert,

Yes.  As long as you only have it installed as many times as you've purchased, you'll be fine.  If it says you've exceeded your licenses, it will take you to your login, ask you to pick a system that previously had the license and remove it there... in this case, it may be the same system name as you are installing to again and that would be fine.  If you ever have a problem licensing though, those are always covered by support and you can open a chat support case and they should be able to square you away, right on the spot. 

Regards!

Thanks -  useful thread.

Updating to build 6571 failed - as discussed by all above -  with an access denied error.  It left some services stopped, and also killed Windows Explorer several times.

Turning off all AV software, AND running as administrator, update worked just fine. Fixing the updater to tell the user that or do it for them would help. Also, every attempt did the download - I wonder if it cleaned up all downloaded files, or whether it could re-use the first successfully downloaded kit?

Thanks for the feedback Nigel.  I feel that there is definitely room for improvement with the inplace upgrade process as well.  This has come up quite a bit with versions 6559 to present so something has changed along the way.  I'm not sure about the download cleanup.  My guess is that they still live in C:\users\yourusername\appdata\local\temp unless you regularly clean temp files (I use CCleaner religiously, but that's about the only registry tool I can recommend as most others have left me with trouble.  I've been using CCleaner at work and home for about 3 years without a single problem - free version).