Inaccessible boot media
Hello everyone:
I’m an IT engineer and I have the following problem:
I got new laptops with NVME SSD storage, I want to migrate Windows 10 (2004 x64) systems from old laptops with HDD to the new laptops with NVME storage (and complete different hardware).
I tried Acronis True Image 2020 - Acronis True Image 2021 to backup and restore my system from the old laptop to the new one, then I tried Acronis Universal Restore. With AUR, there is an error message of missing 5 drivers even if I add every possible driver from HP.
I tried to install windows normally on the new laptop, then I dragged all drivers from it (about 200 driver), then giving those driver to AUR, the same 5 missing drivers, which lead me to think that AUR has limitations and the missing driver is not a real missing drivers because those same drivers can boot a pure system installed on the new laptop.
I always ended up with “Inaccessible boot media” Blue Screen of Death, it appears specifically when my laptop tries to enter Windows system and it fails.
I have been working for 2 weeks on the issue and I would gladly appreciate your help.
Thanks in advanced.
Hello Steve:
Thanks for your time.
My old laptops are UEFI/GPT so are my new laptops. My Acronis rescue media also is booting as UEFI.
My windows 10 is x64 version 2004.
Note that I tried both to backup a full image of my previous system, and I tried Microsoft tool "Sysprep" to strip my OS from drivers, but I ended up with the same result "Inaccessible Boot Device" BSoD.
What are the differences here with the actual disk drives involved for the old and new laptops?
What is being used for the new disk drives in terms of the controller and software, i.e. are they using Intel RST in RAID mode for NVMe M.2 SSD drives? Or perhaps using Intel RST VMD controllers which are proving to me more complex & difficult to use?
Just to repeat myself: Ideally, you should install a copy of either ATI 2020 or 2021 on one of the new laptops with a basic vanilla install of Windows 10, then create the 'Simple' Acronis rescue media on that laptop so that the media picks up the required drivers from the Windows Recovery Environment of the working laptop, then use that media to perform the recovery of the backup from the old laptop.
Hello Steve:
The SSD NVME controller in the new laptop is "Intel RST VMD Controller 9A0B"
I tried what you have said by formatting the new laptop with a fresh Windows 10 image and installing all drivers, then installing ATI 2021 and build Acronis Rescue Media using "Simple" method on my flash disk. I used this flash disk to backup my old system image, then when I tried to recover this image to the new laptop, the acronis rescue media couldn't detect the NVME storage when I need to select the destination Disk, this is as I mentioned before caused by to the lack of NVME driver in the rescue media (even if it should have the NVME driver because this is what "Simple" method should do)
Anyway, I did a second try to make the rescue media on the new laptop but using the "Advanced" option instead of "Simple" > with WIN-PE Based media > Windows Recovery Environment, then I "Add Folder" to provide the NVME driver. Then I recovered the image of my old system to the new laptop and it sill gives the same message "Inaccessible Boot Device".
Anything should I try next ?
Thanks in advanced.
I can only suggest looking at forum topic: Intel VMD Raid0 drive wont show up in the True Image 2021 BootStick! - where other users have tried to resolve similar issues when Intel RST VMD has been involved.
Hello Steve:
The link provided talks about how to detect the NVME drivers by Acronis while restoring an image, which I could resolve by dragging the driver from a working laptop using pnputil command on the new laptops and add this driver to the acronis rescue media.
My problem comes in the next step, after I restore my image from the old laptop to the new laptop, it couldn't boot with "Inaccessible Boot Device"
I give this issue like 3 weeks of my time trying to find solution, as long as Acronis doesn't provide support without a key for certain products, I don't know what to do indeed.
As far as I know, for certain cases of transforming images where source and destination computers have dissimilar hardware, I should be able to fix these issues using Acronis Universal Restore, but unfortunately I can not.
I was thinking about injecting my drivers somehow to windows 10 installation media and try to fix the boot sectors on the recovered image, do you think it may work? I still don't know how to do it but I was thinking about this.
Thanks for your time and effort Steve I do really appreciate it.
In all honesty, at this point with your issue with the Intel RST VMD drivers etc, then I would be looking at alternative solutions to see how they handle the same scenario.
I have no systems with VMD so cannot point to other solutions that are known to work but most competitors offer a trial or free version of their products to enable users to test out the features etc.
I run with both Acronis and Macrium Reflect installed on my own systems plus have given both Ashampoo Backup and MiniTool ShadowMaker a try at other times, plus there are a fair number of further solutions available too. See forum topic: Reflecting on a Post-ATI World where there has been lots of discussion.
IT Alt,
In reading this thread I see that your issue stems from use of the new Intel VMD drivers. The issue is that Intel has not released to date a WinPE driver package for these drivers. The VMD controller drivers actually have a total of five .INF files for the complete driver package. In order to get things working you must install all necessary .INF files.
Some OEM's have released WinPE specific VMD driver packages in which all necessary .INF files are included along with the necessary .sys, .cat, and dll files to install the drivers to get things working in WinPE. I know that Gigabyte has done this and a WinPE folder with the necessary are present in the VMD driver package on their support site. You might head over there and grab that complete driver package, extract the WinPE folder, and point the media builder tool to each INF file in that folder so that all necessary files are added to during the build process. That should get you going here.
Here's an interesting link to download f6vmdflpy-x64.zip from the Intel website. Read the info carefully. It contains only one driver to get the VMD controller working. Adding this driver to bootable media should allow the WinPE media to see the Intel VMD connected drives for backup and restore purposes.
It can also be used to inject the VMD driver into a restored Windows system that fails to boot with the inaccessible boot device error using dism.exe as follows:
Put the VMD driver in a folder named VMD in the root of the USB WinPE boot media. Then boot the failed system with WinPE that has the VMD driver added. Then determine the drive letters WinPE has assigned to the Windows system and the USB boot drive. Then issue this command:
dism.exe /Image:C: /Add-Driver /Driver:F:\VMD /recurse
Where C is the drive letter of the Windows system and F is the drive letter of the USB boot media.
This should get the Windows system to boot. Then use either the Setup file from the above link or the setup file downloaded from the motherboard manufacturer's website to complete the installation of the drivers required to make the Windows system function properly.
IT Alt,
In reading this thread I see that your issue stems from use of the new Intel VMD drivers. The issue is that Intel has not released to date a WinPE driver package for these drivers. The VMD controller drivers actually have a total of five .INF files for the complete driver package. In order to get things working you must install all necessary .INF files.
Some OEM's have released WinPE specific VMD driver packages in which all necessary .INF files are included along with the necessary .sys, .cat, and dll files to install the drivers to get things working in WinPE. I know that Gigabyte has done this and a WinPE folder with the necessary are present in the VMD driver package on their support site. You might head over there and grab that complete driver package, extract the WinPE folder, and point the media builder tool to each INF file in that folder so that all necessary files are added to during the build process. That should get you going here.
Hello Enchanteh:
I headed to Gigabyte and install "mb_driver_intel_bootdisk_irst_19.0.0.1067" specialized for Intel VMD from there which has 6 drivers as Acronis rescue media builder could detect from the downloaded folder as shown in the image bellow, but the same problem persists. I can detect the NVME SSD and after restoring my image to the NVME SSD and rebooting I got "Inaccessible Boot Device" BSoD
Mustang wrote:
It can also be used to inject the VMD driver into a restored Windows system that fails to boot with the inaccessible boot device error using dism.exe as follows:
Put the VMD driver in a folder named VMD in the root of the USB WinPE boot media. Then boot the failed system with WinPE that has the VMD driver added. Then determine the drive letters WinPE has assigned to the Windows system and the USB boot drive. Then issue this command:
dism.exe /Image:C: /Add-Driver /Driver:F:\VMD /recurse
Where C is the drive letter of the Windows system and F is the drive letter of the USB boot media.
This should get the Windows system to boot. Then use either the Setup file from the above link or the setup file downloaded from the motherboard manufacturer's website to complete the installation of the drivers required to make the Windows system function properly.
Hello Mustang:
I think I need more information about USB WinPE Boot Media please.
What do you mean by WinPE media ? Is it the Acronis Rescue Media with VMD driver injected in it, or is it a Windows 10 installation media with VMD driver injected in it?
If you meant the Acronis Rescue Media with VMD injected, the CMD in the booted rescue media can only detect X:\ so dism.exe command can not work there (even if Acronis can detect my NVME SSD in the Acronis window beside that CMD window but the CMD windows can not detect NVMe SSD drive C or D)
If you meant Windows 10 installation media with VMD driver injected, May you provide me with more details ?
Thanks for your time and patience.
I mean the Acronis boot media. You already have that working because it sees the NVMe drive.
Boot the Acronis USB media and close the GUI. That will make the command window work. Then enter the commands:
cd "X:\Program Files\Acronis\CyberProtectHomeOffice\A43"
A43.exe
This will bring up the A43 file manager program. That will allow you to determine the drive letters mentioned in my above post. Then enter the command to inject the VMD driver to the Windows system.
IT,
What does your bios boot order look like? In other words what is the first device selected in that order to boot?
If you have restored your image then either the boot order is wrong or the image you have restored lacks the VMD drivers necessary to boot the drive. If the later here is the case then I have to say that I am unsure how you would go about adding the drivers to your existing backup image.
I believe Mustang has a good idea about doing that. In a43 you can right click on a driver file and you should see an option to install the the driver. You would need to do this with all of the INF files in the package so best to have it all in one folder. Best to use DISM pointed from driver source folder to target drive folder.
Hello Everyone:
Thanks a lot Mustang your reply solved my problem.
dism.exe /Image:C: /Add-Driver /Driver:F:\VMD /recurse
Works perfectly, indeed it injects the required driver - the Inter f6vmdflpy-x64 driver - in the system image and Windows could successfully boot after that.
Note that drives letter must be checked - as you mentioned - with:
cd X:\Program Files\Acronis\AcronisTrueImageHome\A43
A43.exe
Note also that the commands are case sensetive and I change the directory from cd "X:\Program Files\Acronis\CyberProtectHomeOffice\A43 to cd "X:\Program Files\Acronis\AcronisTrueImageHome\A43 due to my software dependency which is Arconis True Image not Acronis Cyper Protect.
However, it seems very strange to me that Acronis Universal Restore could not do it on its own, neither Acronis True Image which seems to me as a "MUST" step for the backup and restore process.
I would like to thank Steve, Enchantech for the important role of helping me to have a better understanding for my issue and I do really appreciate their time, and off-course a big special thanks for you Mustang for your time and information.
Thanks again and best regards for all.
I'm glad to hear you got Windows booting on the new laptop!
Now that you have done that, you should get the full driver installation package from the laptop manufacturer's website. It may be listed as a RAID driver or a SATA driver. It will be an exe file that can be run under Windows. It should be the full VMD controller driver package and will install four or five more inf files and enable the full functionality of the VMD controller. This will include Intel Optane support.
IT,
Great news, glad you have a working solution. I concur with Mustang on installing the full package in your now running Windows install for all the reason he states. Happy to have been a help to you. :<)