Upgrade to Acronis 2019 made my drive unbootable
Upgrade to Acronis 2019 (on WIn 10 x64) made my drive unbootable.
When I rebooted it could not find the MBR and reported no bootable disk available.
Tried the various bootrec /ScanOS etc fixes but it could not find a Windows installation and I had no luck rebuilding the MBR.
At first I thought it was a faulty SSD drive so I replaced it (with a standard drive), updated once again, exact same thing happened.
This is on an Acer Aspire 1 laptop. UEFI set in BIOS. Hint: I think it is something specific to a recovery partition on the Acer laptop.

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John, welcome to these public User Forums.
Sorry to read of your issues here when upgrading but have to confess that I have not encountered any similar issues myself nor remember seeing the same reported here either.
How exactly have you been doing the upgrade to ATI 2019?
Did you download the full installer version from your ATI account or use a web installer?
Are you installing the upgrade from a CD or DVD disc?
Have you tried doing a clean install of ATI 2019 by uninstalling your older version first?
Does the upgrade / install complete successfully and allow you to open the main application?
Were you using either the Acronis Secure Zone or the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (F11 on boot) options of your older version? Did you remove these before upgrading if so?
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Are we saying that simply installing ATI on the system, the next time you reboot, it is FUBAR?
That would be a very unique and odd situation. However, if this is the case, I would not suspect it to be related to the partitions as the install of Acronis does not modify any partitions at install - only at times when doing a restore from a backup. Have any restores been done at this point or just the installation?
If it's just the installation, there may be a driver compatibility error here. It would be very rare for this to happen, but a test would be to use F8 and try to boot into safemode and see if it can boot then. If it was a driver issue though, I would think a BSOD error code would be provided to help identify the issue and/or you could use something like portable bluescreenview to try and identify the error code too.
Or, as another test, you could remove the .snapman.sys driver from Windows\System32\drivers\snapman.sys using command line in the Windows installer disk or any Windows PE (Windows ADK or WindowRE bootable media) on the source drive and then editing the registry on the source drive (not the WinPE drive!!!) to remove the coinciding registry key for it. Then try to boot normal and see if it succeeds or not.
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This has happened TWICE with two different disks.
I consider myself quite capable as an experienced MCSE and IT contractor.
I have had to do a clean installation of Windows each time.
Ironic for backup software, no?
I appreciate your efforts, however it is not my place to test your faulty software.
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Steve Smith wrote:John, welcome to these public User Forums.
Sorry to read of your issues here when upgrading but have to confess that I have not encountered any similar issues myself nor remember seeing the same reported here either.
How exactly have you been doing the upgrade to ATI 2019? - Using the upgrade 5 users option - file is "AcronisTrueImage2019_full_17750.exe" version 23.5.1.17750 downloaded from Acronis weblink
Did you download the full installer version from your ATI account or use a web installer? - Using the upgrade 5 users option - file is "AcronisTrueImage2019_full_17750.exe" version 23.5.1.17750
Are you installing the upgrade from a CD or DVD disc?- Using the upgrade 5 users option - file is "AcronisTrueImage2019_full_17750.exe" version 23.5.1.17750Have you tried doing a clean install of ATI 2019 by uninstalling your older version first? No
Does the upgrade / install complete successfully and allow you to open the main application? Yes , before I reboot. Then, on reboot - I cannot reboot as there is no bootable drive available.
Were you using either the Acronis Secure Zone or the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (F11 on boot) options of your older version? Did you remove these before upgrading if so? The Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (F11 on boot) appears but when loading the kernel(e) the screen is illegible. I did not remove these before upgrading. The boot mode is set to UEFI.
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John, thank you for the updated information.
Please note that neither Rob (Bobbo) or myself work for Acronis - we are both just volunteer users who happen to be MVP's for this product.
If you want to spend more time on resolving this issue, then I would recommend the following steps:
- Assuming you have your older ATI 2018 (?) product installed.
Make a full Disk backup of your working system to an external drive.
Also make sure you have a good, tested copy of the Acronis Rescue Media on USB or CD/DVD media.
This should be your main method of recovery if the problem persists without needing to do a clean install of Windows 10.
- Save a copy of the C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts folder which holds the XML Script files for your backup task configuration.
- Remove the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (ASRM - F11) configuration and ASZ if present then Uninstall ATI 2018 normally via the Control Panel.
- Download the Acronis Cleanup Tool (link below) and run this as Administrator to clean up any other residue of Acronis products.
Note: the cleanup tool will remove all Acronis products, including Disk Director, Universal Restore, Revive, SnapDeply, Backup.
- Restart the computer and ensure you can boot fully into the Windows 10 desktop.
- Install ATI 2019 17750 running from an Administrator account.
Copy back the Scripts folder files before launching the main ATI application if saved in step 2.
- Shutdown and restart the computer to confirm that the boot problem is resolved.
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Hi Steve Smith
I did not realise you were not Acronis employees - apologies!
Thank you for a comprehensive suggestion to solving my problem.
I am a working contractor and away from my personal equipment at the moment but rest assured I will follow your excellent instructions at the first opportunity.
Sincerely, John Rickatson
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John, just one further point with regards to using Acronis Rescue Media - you need to boot this using the same BIOS mode as used by your Windows 10 OS to boot.
Hopefully, you won't need to use the rescue media but better to be prepared beforehand.
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