Errors when I try to restore my entire hard drive from within XP's safe mode
Good afternoon.
When I boot my XP laptop normally, things start to hang up whenever I try to do anything. When I boot into safe mode things don't hang, but there are many programs that I can't run in safe mode, etc., etc. I scanned my system for malware using the standard industry tools but they don't find any issues. Windows seems to work fairly well in safe mode, by the way, with no hangs whatsoever.
I've decided that I want to restore from an Acronis backup that I made a few days earlier when the system was quite stable. Unfortunately this is an old laptop whose built-in CD drive is no longer working, and which doesn't have the ability to boot from any USB device (not my external CD drive, not my thumb drive). Also, it uses a PATA hard drive so I can't just connect it to my main computer 'cause 2.5" PATA connections don't mate with normal IDE cables. I've seen adapters that are available but I'm hoping not to have to order one then wait for days for it to arrive.
I decided to try to use TIH from safe mode to restore my drive. I booted into safe mode then tried to restore the backup. Once I was done setting up the restore and clicked to start the restore operation, TIH complained with error 1722 that RPC wasn't running.
I used services.msc to try to start RPC. Windows says that that service cannot be started in safe mode. I tried doing the same thing for the Acronis schedule service and received the same error.
Can I use Acronis in safe mode to restore my entire drive? (1 partition + MBR + boot 0)
Thanks,
Bill

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I've made some progress. I found that by adding a certain entry to the registry, safe boot would then start the "Acronis Scheduler2 Service" service as well as the "Remote Procedure Call (RPC)" service at boot time. It no longer complains about the RPC service. The next error I hit is
Failed to activate Acronis Bootable Agent
specified file does not exist
0x00040011
Does this indicate that I need to allow another service to start during safe boot?
Bill
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Did you make a bootCD? If you boot into windows safe mode, you might not have USB support and have other probs.
If you boot from the ATI bootcd into ATI's safe mode, you probably won't have usb support, as it boots a version of DOS and relies of BIOS for hardware drivers and some BIOS don't support USB without software drivers.
You might have to boot from the ATI cd in full mode (which uses linux and linux drivers) but use some start up parameters for compatibility -- there a list of starup parameters in the user guide. Most common one is "USBmouse=off"
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Unfortunately this is an old laptop whose built-in CD drive is no longer working. I started the ATIH software (which was already installed on the laptop) from safe mode. Thanks for the suggestion though.
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Quite frankly, I don't think you will be able to get TI running properly in Safe Mode. Perhaps its time to invest in a new CD drive for your laptop.
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