Antonio, what is the exact status of your dual-boot system today?

I am unsure from your description whether you are still able to boot into XP or Windows 7, or whether you have now 'cleaned' / wiped / formatted your disk drive?

If you still have a working dual-boot XP / 7 system, and you only want to fix a problem with Win 7, then you should only need to restore the ATIH 2014 image of the Win 7 partition to overwrite the existing Win 7 partition.  I am assuming that Win 7 was installed to a separate partition or disk, and not installed within the same partition as XP.

If you have wiped your disk drive, then again, you will need to use your ATIH 2014 bootable Rescue Media and restore the complete XP&7.tib backup image by following the steps shown in the ATIH 2014 User Guide: Recovering partitions and disks and in particular, the statement shown there that states:

If you backed up an entire disk, you can choose to recover the entire disk at once by clicking Switch to disk mode. To be able to select partitions again, click Switch to partition mode.

thanks so much for your reply

unfortunately I already wiped the destination disk 

I will try again according to your suggestion but my ATIH 2014 bootable Rescue Media shows as in http://www.acronis.com/en-gb/support/documentation/ATIH2014/index.html#… and not as you suggested in your reply.

May be i'm using a wrong ATIH 2014 bootable Rescue Media ??

Anycase my problem is that when I'm in the windows depicted in http://www.acronis.com/en-gb/support/documentation/ATIH2014/index.html#… and selected the desired disk ... the disk is greyed and even if selected next step does not do anything as no disk was selected.

Antonio, are you following the steps exactly as they are given in the page you referenced from the ATIH 2014 User Guide:

To recover a system disk:

1. Arrange the boot order in BIOS so as to make your rescue media device (CD, DVD or USB stick) the first boot device. See Arranging boot order in BIOS.
2. Boot from the rescue media and select True Image.
3. Select My disks below Recover on the Home screen.
4. Select the system disk or partition backup to be used for recovery.

   When the backup is not displayed, click Browse and specify path to the backup manually.

5. Select Recover whole disks and partitions at the Recovery method step.
6. Select the system partition (usually C) on the What to recover screen. If the system partition has a different letter, select the partition using the Flags column. It must have the Pri, Act flags.

   In case of Windows 7 the System Reserved partition will have the Pri, Act flags. You will need to select for recovery both the System Reserved partition and the System partition.

7. At the "Settings of partition C" (or the letter of the system partition, if it is different) step check the default settings and click Next if they are correct. Otherwise, change the settings as required before clicking Next. Changing the settings will be needed when recovering to the new hard disk of a different capacity.
8. Carefully read the summary of operations at the Finish step. If you have not resized the partition, the sizes in the Deleting partition and Recovering partition items must match. Having checked the summary click Proceed.
9. When the operation finishes, exit the standalone version of Acronis True Image 2014, remove the rescue media and boot from the recovered system partition. After making sure that you have recovered Windows to the state you need, restore the original boot order.

At step 6. ensure that you have chosen the correct disk drive for the restore operation - drives may not show in the same order as they are shown in Windows when you are booted from the Acronis rescue media.

Also make sure that you select all partitions for the selected source drive in step 6 by selecting the whole disk. 

Well ....

1) i confirm that my ATIH 2014 bootable Rescue Media shows windows as depicted in http://www.acronis.com/en-gb/support/documentation/ATIH2014/index.html#… and not as you suggested in your reply (i.e. http://www.acronis.com/en-gb/support/documentation/ATIH2014/index.html#…).

2) my dual partition image.tib is recognised as dual when i choose the tib file for recovering

3) when the program asks what to choose to recover i selected both partition and MBR and hence one again my ATIH 2014 recognise the tib file as containing the MBR sector and the 2 partitions (one is flagged as hindered)

4) when you select the destination disk where recover the image, selecting also signed disk, nothin happens even after selection. Paricularly, if i select the destination disk as unpartitionated (as obtained by your utility System Clean-up) and pressing next nothing happens; after partitioning as NTFS and formatting the destination disk (by an utility named GParted), selection of the disk give rise to an alert (see picture) and pressing ok and next doesn't start any recovering procedure.

It seems like that some routines are faulty. 

This is quite strange because in the past I had no problems in recovering sinle partition disk.

Antonio, please see the following YouTube video: How to recover with Acronis True Image 2014 and compare this with your own experience  here.

thanks so much Steve Smith

really thankful for support

unfortunately I'm at work in these days ... but I will try again towards the end of the week

see later

i will try again this nite

I checked the youtube video ... i did exactly as shown here (apart sector by sector checked) but nothing happens

I will know in a few hours

Dear Steve

I checked deeply your suggestions as well as the YouTube video from Acronis but ... the unfortunately the situation remains the same .... 

For your convenience, I attached here the relevant photos of the screen during my tentative of recovering my disk (from 1a to 1 f time ordered) but as you see at the end nothing happens .... the destination disk remains gray and nothing happens

:(

A different and strange situation happens if, during backup selection, i select the blu tib backup instead of grey disk (compare Photo 1a of previous pot with Photo 2a).

Now recovering start. Particularly:

a) during recovering method screen, sector to sector methos DOES NOT appear more (see Photo 2b with respect to 1b)

b) the destination disk now can be selected !!! ( see relevant photos)

c) but in the summary (see Photo 2g) only the partition with win 7 can be recovered sector by sector while the first one with XP no.

At the end, recovery started and Achronis says was successfully at the end.

Booting the PC, the booter appear permitting me to select XP or 7 as before backing the disk.

Selecting XP, all was ok.

Unfortunately selecting 7, Win 7 does not start and BIOS says wrong MBR.

Rebooting the PC now even XP DOES NOT start more since BIOS says wrong MBR.

I'm starting to thinks that I was wrong buying Achronis True Image

Antonio,

Thank you for the additional information and images.  I do not think that you have a boot problem that is caused by Acronis software.  It is more likley that your Masterbooter utility could cause these MBR issues - from looking at the Masterbooter website, this software was intended for much earlier versions of Microsoft Windows, i.e. 98, ME, NT etc as there is no mention of support for Windows 7 even though you have had this work.

Please see the following websites which offer help for resolving the current issues with dual-booting XP and 7.

Windows 7: Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP 

See in particular the following advice from the above webpage:

If you get Error loading Operating System after XP restarts:

• Using your Windows 7 installation disc, boot to the command prompt at startup.
• Type in these comands below, and press enter after each one.
  • bootrec /FixMbr
  • bootrec /FixBoot
  • bootrec /RebuildBcd
• Exit the command prompt and restart the computer.
• At this point, Windows 7 should boot up the same way before trying to install XP.
• Continue to step 8 below and run EasyBCD from Windows 7 instead.

Dual-Boot Guides - information about the EasyBCD utility that can be used to correctly setup the Windows Boot Manager to allow you to start either XP or 7 without the need for your Masterbooter utility.

See the detailed steps in the first webpage for configuring EasyBCD in Windows 7 for XP.

8. Run EasyBCD (free version).
NOTE: This is required to repair the Windows 7 boot file and add XP to the Windows Boot Manager list.

9. On the left side of EasyBCD, click on the Add New Entry button. (See screenshot below)

A) In the top section under Operating Systems, click on the Windows tab. (See screenshot below)

B) To the right of Type, select Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3 from the drop down menu. (See screenshot below)
WARNING: Be sure to leave the Automatically detect correct drive box checked.

C) To the right of Name, you can leave the default Microsoft Windows XP as the name to be displayed in the Windows Boot Manager, or you can type whatever name you would like to have instead. (See screenshot below)

D) Click on the Add Entry button. (See screenshot below)

10. On the left side of EasyBCD, click on the BCD Deployment button, select (dot) the Install the Windows Vista/7 bootloader to the MBR option, and click on the Write MBR button. (See screenshot below)

11. Close EasyBCD.

12. Restart the computer to have the option to boot from Microsoft Windows XP or Windows 7. (See screenshot below)

Dear Steve Smith

I forget to cite also that, once Win XP recovered (but not Win 7), I tryed also to recover the (dual boot XP/Win 7 double partition) disk image from Windows instead of using the ATIH 2014 bootable Rescue Media I used previously.

Similarly, ... nothing change ... i.e. I'm not able to recover my disk properly.

Dear Steve Smith,

thank you again for your envaluable support.

In your last support reply, you suggested that the problem comes from the bootloader used, i.e. MasterBooter, and not from Acronis True Image, and you suggested me to using a recovering sotware like EasyBCD also as a better dualbooter approach.

Unfortunately, as far as i know, EasyBCD can surely do a good switch between XP and Win 7 as initial booter  but cannot hinder one OS starting the other one.

I think that in dual booting approach, hindering the second OS while starting the first (and obviuosly viceversa) is essential to avoid that both OSs "look each others" generating frustating problems like, just as example, those arising from  XP from deleting your Windows 7 System Restore Points everytime XP is started (see http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/127417-system-restore-points-stop-xp-…).

On the contrary, MasterBooter can do this and this is  nice feature I tested many time without having all the troubles I'm experimenting with Acronis True Image.

Sure, last version of MasterBooter v.3.7 supports OS up to Vista but you should know that starting with Windows Vista, the NTLDR bootloader was retired and now Windows (including Win 7) uses the BOOTMGR bootloader instead, which stores its settings in the new BCD (Boot Configuration Data) file instead of the traditional boot.ini. So, if MasterBooter v.3.7 supports  Vista should support also Win 7, and this is what i verified many times after I installed Win 7 /MasterBooter on my XP, i.e., a nice and well working dual XP/Win7 boot system!!! (tested many times!!!).

Accordingly, I'm unsure that the troubles I had and I have with Acronis True Images comes from the MasterBooter.

I have well documented that, depending on which ATIM image I select, OR the destination disk cannot be selected not permitting any recover OR the recovering step is a poorly 1:1 sector by sector disk image recover as I already showed.

I invested my money on Acronis True Image since it appeared me the best solution on the market for disk imaging, backup and recovering but it seems definetively not working on dual boot dual partition system like mine.

Even if highly disappointed for the time and money lost for this product, I would acknowledge Acronis for its support.

Hello Antonio,

Please take a look at the following article:
Creating a Multi-Boot System

Thank you,

For those interested, backup and recovering of a dual active partition XP(sp2)/Win 7 (sp1) with Masterbooter as boot loader was successfully solved by using EASUS Todo BackUp FREE

no comments .....

bye bye Acronis 

Strange supporters here at Acronis ..... instead of solve the Acronis True Image troubles I had, they teach me as use thirdy parts software (see above posts) or as to set a dual boot system ... as this one was the problem and NOT Acronis True Image

Dear Ekaterina, Acronis don't sell more its OS booter ... do you know?? May be some reasons should be.

best regards

Antonio

Antonio,

The tool Acronis OS Selector was distributed along with Acronis Disk Direktor 11 Home, that you likely could have as a long term user of Acronis True Image.
I see, that you were able to restore, so closing this thread.