Loaded Backup Image--Now Won't Boot
It's all in the title: I backed up my entire system, and then I went through the process of loading that back-up. It prompted me to restart, and I haven't made it into Windows since then.
I did the recovery in Windows. Acronis told me to restart. I did so. Now, I am stuck in a boot loop. As soon as the system begins to boot, it says, "Preparing Automatic Repair", and then, "Diagnosing your PC". Finally I arrive at a blue screen saying, "Automatic Repair couldn't repair your PC".
None of the "Advanced Options" ("Use a device", "Use another operating system", "Reset this PC", "System Restore", "Go back to previous version", "System Image Recovery", "Startup Repair", "Command Prompt", "UEFI Firmware Settings", and "Startup Settings") do anything.
Nicholas, if you are able to get into the BIOS settings on your computer, try disabling Secure Boot and check that the Boot option is set to Windows Boot Manager which is the entry required for a UEFI system.
When ATI requires a restart to complete a recovery action, it modifies the Windows Boot Configuration Data settings to allow a temporary Linux OS environment to be booted from which the ATI offline application is launched to perform the action.
Some systems have problems booting from any Linux OS, hence the suggestion above as it is normally Secure Boot that stops this.
Otherwise, if you have either a Windows Recovery disc or a Windows Install DVD, you should try to do a Startup Repair to see if this will repair the BCD files to allow Windows to restart.
Personally, any OS Recovery should always be actioned by using the Acronis bootable Rescue media to avoid this type of issue with a changed or corrupted Windows BCD store.
See webpage: How to Rebuild the BCD in Windows which may help you if needed.
Thanks, Mr. Smith. I am stuck on step six of that process:
attrib c:\boot\bcd -h -r -s
Returns "Path not found - C:\boot".
Nicholas, how did you get to step 6 here, which steps led you there?
The attrib command is an example but the actual location of the boot folder will depend on your system. For your UEFI system, this will probably be on the EFI partition instead of the C: drive.
Thanks again for the reply! I actually had to reinstall Windows.
My problem now, if I may, is that this is an Entire PC backup I am attempting, and, once again, after this clean install, the restore process has bricked my PC (currently installing Windows again). (I know you said to use Bootable Recovery Media, and I tried to do so, but when I would boot into the ACI recovery platform I could not find the Bootable Media, whether I had saved it to a USB or as an .iso file.
Is there a way for this to work, or do I have to make do with losing all my files?
Nicolas, sorry to read of the continuing woes here.
I think it is best to try to start again here and make sure that we are all reading from the same page!
First, please tell us exactly what type of computer we are looking at here? Laptop, Desktop, Tablet etc? What version of Windows OS? Is this 64-bit or 32-bit?
Next, what disk drives are involved here? Are they HDD (aka older, spinning mechanical drives) or SSD drives? Are these plain SATA drives connecting via cables to ports on the motherboard, or are they newer NVMe M.2 / PCIe card drives?
What type of drive is being used for your 'Entire PC' backup image to be stored on? Is this an internal, external or network drive? If external, which USB standard is being used? USB 2.x or 3.x?
Please try to answer as much of the above as you can, but don't worry if any questions don't really mean much to you?
Final question, how are you creating the Acronis Rescue media, on what medium, i.e. CD/DVD or USB stick (and if the latter, what size of USB stick / how is it formatted?).
Thanks for your patience, Mr. Smith! My PC is an ASUS T200TAC Transformer Book (a convertible tablet/laptop). It is running Windows 10 64-bit.
Its hard disk is a 57.65 GB SSD. I couldn't find what type of connections it used, but I can tell you the disk is a Hyinx HCG8e.
I am trying to replace the contents of this drive, C:, with those from before I reinstalled Windows (the first time), which I uploaded to the Acronis cloud. Whether the best way of doing this is to take that image straight from the cloud to my hard drive, or from the cloud to my 14.4 GB USB 2.0 and then to my hard drive (and how to do that), is something on which perhaps you could enlighten me.
Nicolas, thank you for the system information etc - this does help clarify what the issue is here!
From what I can find via Google, the internal SSD is a fixed drive, i.e. potentially soldered to the motherboard and not replaceable. See webpage: Asus Laptop T200TAC Transformer Book Compatible SSD Upgrades
This is not an issue while the drive is working fine and shouldn't be an issue for recovering the drive back to the earlier state when you made the backup to the Acronis Cloud.
If you are going to try to restore the backup image directly from the Acronis Cloud then you will need a wired network connection to the Asus Transformer Book - the Acronis Rescue media does not have support for Wireless connection and I suspect does not have support for the eMMC SSD (in the Linux media version).
So the starting point here has to be to get the Acronis Rescue media to boot correctly and be able to see your eMMC SSD drive where you want to recover the backup to.
I would recommend using the MVP Custom ATIPE Builder tool for this purpose, as it offers more features than the standard media produced by ATI and can build the WinPE rescue media from the Windows 10 Recovery Environment files. See the MVP User Tools and Tutorials link in the Useful Links section of the forum pages for the latest version 18.2 of the tool, download this to the root folder of your drive then run the main program as Administrator to launch the tool. No installation is needed. Your USB drive should be 32GB or less (2GB is fine) and formatted as FAT32.
Please confirm your Windows 10 BIOS mode by running the msinfo32 program - this will show as either UEFI or as Legacy. This is important for when booting the Rescue Media which needs to use the same BIOS boot mode as used by Windows.
It is my understanding that the T200 uses a 32bit UEFI firmware despite the device running a 64bit OS that would mean that the 32bit bootloader file would have to be present in the MVP media boot folder to boot the device.
That would require manually adding that bootloader to the media.
Additionally, Secure Boot needs to be disabled in the bios.
Bob, would this work if Nicholas created the 32-bit Rescue Media with the MVP Custom WinPE builder?
I'm not sure. I thought of that too but I am not sure TI would restore the image or not.
I want to say that it would work, I am just not certain. Obviously ASUS gets Windows x64 to boot using the 32 bit loader but I don't know how they're doing that.
Paul might know a workaround.
I tried running the Custom ATIPE Builder and then restoring from ATI again, but it didn't boot this time either, likely because I didn't input the right parameters into the Builder. I am giving up for now because I didn't have much to restore anyway (some pictures and music), and it's not worth the hassle. My impression is that this software is meant for more upscale systems and more advanced users. Thanks for being so responsive to my queries, anyway!
Thanks for the update Nicholas, sorry that we weren't able to help you achieve what you were wanting to do. If you only want to restore some pictures and music from an old backup image, then there is no need to restore the whole drive / OS etc. With ATI installed, you should be able to open the old backup image in Windows Explorer by double-clicking on the image .tib file, then just use Copy & Paste for the files you want.
Thanks, I was able to restore the files I wanted in this manner.
That is good Nicholas, thanks for the update.