Error during PE recovery: Attempt to use null reference
Hi,
Computer broke, trying to recover from a validated archive.
Tried using both the Linux and windows PE USB boot disk.
Error is
'Please contact support'
Attempt to use null reference. (0x10001)
$module = "trueimg_home_pe_vsa64S39216"
Processor::RaiseNullReferenceException: _ c:\jenkins_agent\workspace\ati-main-win-ati\62\processor\ref\ref.cpp(236)
The error for the linux based one is almost identical.
How to I recovery my data?
Over clocking is also known to cause this type of error.
Hi,
I'm currently encountering the same error when trying to restore an archive to a system partition (booting from a WinPE based recovery usb stick)
Did you find a solution for the error?
Thanks,
Andreas
(double entry, sorry)
Solution in my case:
I'm running Bitlocker FDE on the system I tried to restore. I created a full backup from the running system, then something went wrong (failed SW installation) and I wanted to revert to the previous point. I expected to have a non-encrypted disk afterwards. However the restore failed with the error message described above.
As soon as I decrypted the target drive (= de-activating bitlocker), the restore worked perfectly and I had the system in the expected status afterwards.
I did not think it's a difference for Acronis whether to overwrite a clear text partition or an encrypted partition. In addition, the error message was rather confusing / misleading for me. Eventually deleting the partition prior to restoring it would have helped as well, didn't try that however.
Andreas, thanks for your update / feedback. If the target drive / partition was encrypted by BitLocker, then I would have expected Acronis to post an error advising the same rather than the null reference error being reported! I can only guess that the way the encrypted partition showed itself to Acronis contributed to some confusion in the program here!
In my view the null reference is expected behavior when encryption is involved. After all, what good would encryption be if the filesystem were readable from a medium outside of the internal system? Null, meaning nothing, indicates the recovery media found nothing to perform its work to suggesting that encryption is therefore enforce and working. Expected behavior.
Hello.
I have the exact same error, but I don't use Bitlocker nor any other encryption, just classic SSD NVMe drives, and a home made PE boot USB stick, adding my Dell Inspiron 7306 SSD driver in it. The backup works well but the restore causes this error to occur. During restore, the destination drive is well detected with its model and size. I plug the backup source drive and destination drives to USB ports of the laptop.
My exact error is the following, coming up directly after starting the restore with "Execute", after a message requesting to reboot the computer (but reboot not made yet):
Attempt to use null reference. (0x10001)
$module = "trueimg_home_pe_vsa64_39216"
Processor::RaiseNullReferenceException: _
"c:\jenkins_agent\workspace\ati-main-win-ati\62\processor\ref\ref.cpp(236)"
So for me it is impossible to restore my backup.
Can someone please help?
During restore, the destination drive is well detected with its model and size. I plug the backup source drive and destination drives to USB ports of the laptop.
Sorry but can you clarify the above?
What are you restoring here, where will the target drive be used if the recovery is successful?
Is the laptop you are using the same device used to create your PE rescue media?
Typically with laptop recovery, it is best to have the target drive installed in the laptop so that the correct disk controller drivers are recognised, especially with NVMe drives where any enclosures / docks can introduce different controller drivers not present in the destination PC.
Enchantech wrote:In my view the null reference is expected behavior when encryption is involved. After all, what good would encryption be if the filesystem were readable from a medium outside of the internal system? Null, meaning nothing, indicates the recovery media found nothing to perform its work to suggesting that encryption is therefore enforce and working. Expected behavior.
As a programmer, I'll say that null reference is an occurrence which is not all that uncommon. It simply means that the program was trying to use some pointer to some data and that pointer was null. When this happens, it generates an "exception". Proper programming practice is to catch the exception and handle it... maybe an error message or some other action. It should not be considered expected behavior... it's a bug if it stops the program.
Steve Smith wrote:During restore, the destination drive is well detected with its model and size. I plug the backup source drive and destination drives to USB ports of the laptop.
> Sorry but can you clarify the above?
> What are you restoring here, where will the target drive be used if the recovery is successful?
Yes sure. The destination drive is on a USB port with M.2 adapter and the source drive with backup source too. The target drive will be used on the computer I am running Acronis True Image boot drive.
> Is the laptop you are using the same device used to create your PE rescue media?
Yes. But I had to add manually some drivers for it to work, especially the SSD controller driver, this was unfortunately not the case by default, it would be good to fix this too in the Acronis media creation tool.
> Typically with laptop recovery, it is best to have the target drive installed in the laptop so that the correct disk controller drivers are recognised, especially with NVMe drives where any enclosures / docks can introduce different controller drivers not present in the destination PC.
I tried that and the same error occurs, but it worked the first time I tried. I will come back on this later as I am doing lot of tests to try to reproduce and isolate the issue.
> As a programmer, I'll say that null reference is an occurrence which is not all that uncommon. It simply means that the program was trying to use some pointer to some data and that pointer was null. When this happens, it generates an "exception". Proper programming practice is to catch the exception and handle it... maybe an error message or some other action. It should not be considered expected behavior... it's a bug if it stops the program.
So I made more tests. I did lot of recovery retries in different conditions.
The conclusion is that when it failed, I could redo exactly the same condition another day and it worked then. And sometimes it fails, in the exact same conditions.
I tried with an external USB 3.0 HDD as source, or from an external SSD M.2 to USB 3.0 adapter as source of the backup. I also tried internal drive as SSD as destination and another time the same but with a C partition created on it before the restore process. I also tried through a docking station in between the PC and the external drive.
Everything leads to the conclusion that it is not related to any of those conditions and that all of them can produce this error to happen, as well as they can all work.
It is a little bit like if a variable would be wrongly initialized, and it depends on the boot that you made. One time this variable is properly set and another time it is wrongly set and this error occurs.
Currently the only workaround that I see is to shutdown the computer and try again several times until it works and the message does not appear anymore.
Would it be possible to ask someone on this thread to try also himself, doing a simple restore process on an internal or external SSD drive, from an external SSD drive and try to reproduce this error, using Acronis True Image 2021 (for non BitLocker encrypted partitions of course)?
Did someone from the Acronis team read this and did try to reproduce this situation?
Sorry but this is a user forum with minimal interaction / visits from any Acronis people other than the forum moderator.
ATI 2021 is not a supported product and Acronis will not investigate any issues reported for it unless you either purchase their Pay per Incident support, or else can show that the problem is present in a supported application which would be Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office at this time.
Oklamaho wrote:Did someone from the Acronis team read this and did try to reproduce this situation?
Hello Oklamaho,
I'll clarify with my colleagues the status of this error message. Looking at the number of the support tickets submitted for this issue, there seems to be mostly cases with the old product versions affected, however I cannot confirm for now that the error handling for this scenario was really improved.
I have exactly the same issue now when trying to restore my back-up image which was not created for a Bitlocker-encrypted partition. The partition drive was a Windows 11 OS drive where TI 2021 was installed. I've submitted a support ticket as well.
JY Lee wrote:I have exactly the same issue now when trying to restore my back-up image which was not created for a Bitlocker-encrypted partition. The partition drive was a Windows 11 OS drive where TI 2021 was installed. I've submitted a support ticket as well.
I got this issue temporarily fixed by following the Acronis tech support's instruction. I have a separate Bitlocker-encrypted partition drive which is not the one that I made a back-up image for. They suggested attempting to restore my back-up image after decrypting the separate Bitlocker-encrypted drive. Then, TI 2021 could restore the back-up image.
I didnt' have this kind of issue at all when using TI 2017 and asked them to release a new Build for 2021 after fixing it. This could be a temporary solution if you have the same issue.
Here's an update: Acronis declined to fix this bug and instead asked me to upgrade to Cyber Protection with an annual subscription. They think they're the only one who is selling back-up solutions. I'll move to Aomei Backupper with a perpetual upgrade option.
I also got the error message:
Attempt to use null reference (0x1001)
$module = "trueimg_home_media_glx_39287"
RaiseNullReferenceException : c:/jenkins_agent/worksapce/ati-main-win-ati/529/processor/ref/ref.cpp(236)
when trying to restore the system partition on my Lenovo laptop recently. The partition was not bit locker encripted. Support asked me to upgrade to Acronis Cyber Protect home, which I surely will not do, due to the annual subscription. Regarding a good customer service, such programmer bugs should be fixed and not urge customers to buy a newer version.
Update 11/14/2022:
I had contact with the support. He told me to download Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office as a 30 days trial version, create from there a new rescue media and try to restore the backup. It worked, but with Acronis True Image Home 2021, the first restores worked as well. Still remains the bad feeling, that if you need the restore urgently, it might fail again. Acronis should really fix this bug in older software versions.
Dear Jens Wickinger,
Thank you for the feedback. We bring apologies for any possible inconvenience. We have prioritized your case in our internal system. Acronis support engineer will contact you soon.
JY Lee wrote:I got this issue temporarily fixed by following the Acronis tech support's instruction. I have a separate Bitlocker-encrypted partition drive which is not the one that I made a back-up image for. They suggested attempting to restore my back-up image after decrypting the separate Bitlocker-encrypted drive. Then, TI 2021 could restore the back-up image.
I didnt' have this kind of issue at all when using TI 2017 and asked them to release a new Build for 2021 after fixing it. This could be a temporary solution if you have the same issue.
Here's an update: Acronis declined to fix this bug and instead asked me to upgrade to Cyber Protection with an annual subscription. They think they're the only one who is selling back-up solutions. I'll move to Aomei Backupper with a perpetual upgrade option.
Hello. Thank you for your update, it is interesting.
However we should always be able to restore data to a drive, even though there is another drive which has bitlocker on it, on our system. It really draws to a bug, that should be solved.
Unfortunately, people are much more backuping than restoring, so this situation is seen only when people have really lost their data and need to restore it, which is very seldom. But Acronis should fix it because else their True Image product is a very good one to backup/restore full partitions, it worked well before this new issue.
For now, the solution I found is to try to restore several times and reboot when it fails. After the 4th or 5th time usually it can work. But it is very frightening when a restore solution does not restore your data!
It seems priority has been increased on this ticket, good news!
Dear Oklamaho,
Thank you for the comment and recommendations.
Hello.
You are welcome. Please let it known on this ticket once the bug has been fixed, and a pointer to the new version that we can download.
Thanks!