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Recovered disk does not boot

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Laptop Acer Aspire ES 15 purchased 2016 with Windows 10 64bit Home preinstalled.

ATIH 2019 installed. Latest backups full backup and one differential backup. So the computer must have booted after the full backup.

After a holiday Windows update orgies for hours on laptop and desktop. Maybe I lost my patience too early and interrupted the processes – both would not boot any more thereafter. Recovering the desktop with a disk backup finally worked. I expected the same for the laptop but it has never booted again thereafter.

I am not really sure whether the laptop was working in BIOS or UEFI mode, when the full backup was made which I try to restore but I think it was UEFI.

Laptop in UEFI mode, backup file on USB HDD, bootable Acronis CD, during recovery the following 4 volumes are offered for recovery:

  • NTFSC C: primary 930 GB NTFS
  • EFI System Partition Pri. 100 MB  FAT32
  • Track 0
  • Recovery Partition Pri. 500 MB

I choose all 4 volumes for recovery of he whole disk.

Recovery works but at boot thereafter Windows states that it prepares an automatic repair, circle rotates and after a while the system just switches itself off without any further comment.

The recovered disk as well as the disk before recovery is/was seen when the computer is booted with a Ubuntu DVD, a WindowsPE CD. I can open the files and see their content, so there is no ransom malware encryption and I think no HDD hardware failure either.

When changing the laptop to legacy-BIOS mode, at trial to boot the laptop no operating system is found.

Any idea what I am missing after the recovery or before the recovery???

 

 

 

 

 

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Franz, if you are being offered an EFI System Partition in the options for recovery, then you have a UEFI boot OS / system.

I can only suggest trying a full disk recovery ensuring that your laptop is being booted from the Acronis Rescue Media in UEFI mode, then selecting the most recent backup image file (i.e. the differential file you mentioned, assuming you have the initial full backup file too).

See KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

Also see forum topic: [How to] recover an entire disk backup - and in particular the attached PDF document showing this process for recovery.

Franz, I'd also follow Steve's advice to do the full disk recovery (which it sounds like you did, but just to be sure again that you are booting the rescue media in UEFI mode as well and to make sure it shows successful completion).

After that, disconnect the external drives / disks/ recovery media before shutting down the system.  And, before attempting to boot into the OS, boot straight into the bios and make sure that "Windows Boot Manager" has the first boot priority... in some cases the bios will move that down below everything else after a recovery and can fail to boot the internal hard drive if it catches on something like an SD card or other non-bootable device first.

 

Thanks for your inputs.

I made the recovery from the diff backup now, went fine. When booting, I now have the message "No Bootable Device" and a logo I never had before  - a HDD + magnifying glass.

When trying to boot with a YUMI USB-stick containing win10 the same message comes, although this stick boots on an older laptop (BIOS without UEFI) well into the Windows 10 installation/repair

There is never any "Windows Boot Manager" offered in the BIOS in UEFI mode. f12 results in no choices, just "Boot Manager". 

I made another recovery with the full backup and also then there is no "Windows Boot Manager" offered, only the hard disk. Result is again "No Bootable Device". 

All that was done with the laptop UEFI mode.

Unfortunately this "new" machine has no removable battery any more, no lids to be easily opened to access the components, e.g. BIOS battery, hdd etc......I have seen  a video on Youtube, how this laptop can be opened - crazy.

 

Franz, what is the make / model of the laptop here?

In the BIOS, is Secure Boot enabled in the settings?

Acer Aspire ES 15 ES1-531-P5BB

I have tried to boot with and without "Secure Boot" activated. did not make a difference.

When switching to bios mode and trying to boot from USB-stock - the 
Windows logo comes, circle rotates under it, then the machine turns itself off without comment.

I had a series of even older backups which I deleted just before the accident. Murphy's law in action. But I should still have some backup of the factory state somewhere.....

Make sure that the recovery media is removed from the PC before you attempt boot.  Also make certain that the boot order in your bios is set to Windows Boot Manager.  Do not have the boot priority set to any individual drive, that usually results in the message you quoted.

I did remove the usb hdd 

there ist no windows boot manager offered as boot device.......

Yumi is a legacy bootloader. There is a newer uefi Yumi beta, but it's not the greatest. I think your system is purely UEFI... or possibly 32-bit uefi. 

Definitely make sure secure boot is off, unplug all other drives and then, what boot options do you have in the bios? Selecting the hard drive is ok for legacy, but not uefi and that's where you normally see windows boot manager as a boot option.

Curious, but is there a legacy or CSM option to enable? After you disable secure boot, delete the keys in the bios (this will not harm anything) . Reboot.  Go back into the bios and  see if you can enable CSM if it shows up then.  This may all be moot since your rescue media seems to be working, but just in case.

I had an Acer Aspire 2-in-1 (32-bit only uefi bios with only 2GB of memory) from Costco before I got fed up with it and returned for an ASUS T200 2-in-1 a few years ago. It was a bit of a pain, but did get Acronis rescue media  to boot on it and make some successful backup and restores. 

You want yo make sure you're using the one time boot menu with it for USB booting. I think it was F1 on that system.

 

Also, have you checked for firmware updates? This one seems to suggest a bios issue...

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/acer-aspire-es1-stuck-at-bios.2991364/

There is a choice between Legacy and UEFI mode.

f2 to enter BIOS, f12 for boot sequence.

I have tried now with a Windows 10 USB installation stick, I cannot get into the installation window with either legacy or uefi mode.The machine just closes down after a while, the stick's LED flickering before everything closes down. The same stick works fine on the older laptop which does not have uefi mode.If the disk wasn't readable by a linux disk, I would think about a hardware problem.

I will try next to install the even older backup.

I am quite sure that uefi was the factory setting of the machine.

?????

Franz,

It's possible that the USB stick has a hidden bootloader as well - especially if it was formatted with a 3rd party tool at some time (Rufus or anything like that).

I'd try going into Windows disk management and delete all volumes.  Then initialize it as FAT32 and do a full format to make sure it's "clean".  Windows can only read one partition on the drive (where it may have a hidden one from Linux).  Then rebuild again and try.  

If it still isn't booting on this system, it has to be a bios setting - did you disable secure boot?  Can you boot any UEFI media?

The same stick works fine on the older laptop which does not have uefi mode.

Franz, this sounds very much like an issue with the Acer BIOS when Secure Boot is enabled.  That is the only time I have had this type of issue.  You have to set a supervisor password to disable Secure Boot, after which I was able to boot my ATI rescue USB stick in UEFI mode on the laptop I was having issues with!

Steve, I believe I had to do the same on my Acer Aspire 2-in-1 now that I think about it. The Acer bios seems to be very locked down. 

Finally success!!!!!!

I searched again, somebody suggested to update the BIOS. I had an outdated version. The BIOS flash file of WD was an exe file to be started from within Windows. How to update BIOS when no Windows? I called Acer support and the suggested to start the BIOS file in a WindowsPE environment. i had a WIN7PE USB-stick, BIOS update worked fine but no boot thereafter. 

Acer support had also suggested to do a "battery reset" through a hole at the bottom. I did it but it did not solve the problem.

Then I remembered the AcronisWinPE DVD-disk I had also burnt after buying the 2019 licenses. I must confess i never read what this disk is exactly since up to now the Linux disk had always worked fine. So I recovered the harddisk after booting the AcronisWinPE DVD over night and in the morning I had a booting system again!!!!!

Solution was doing the recovery with the AcronisWINPE disk.

I will have to read what this disk actually does compared to the Linux version.

Thanks to everybody for their help.