Dell Optiplex 990 Wont Deploy

Hello George,

Thank you for your post and welcome to our forum. I will do my best to assist you.

Please collect this report and contact our Support team so that we can resolve this issue for you. I apologize for any inconvenience and if you have additional questions please let me know.

Thank you.

Hi, Im also having a similar problem with the optiplex 990 and trying to boot into PXE

It simply errors sating "Acronis Loader fatal error: At least 512 kb of conventional memory required to start acronis loader"

Im wondering if it doesnt have the needed drivers for the raid controller on the board?

Infact, i can now confirm that it doesnt have the drivers for the raid controller as i disabled raid and it worked right away, re-enabled and it failed to boot with the same issue...

I can confirm, i'm getting the same issue with E6510 and E6520..

Well i ve now raised it with support, who are investigating, so i will update you once i have a result :)

I'm experiencing same issue on the Dell Optiplex 990 when I used the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Workstation Build 13544 CD Boot disk. It's not getting IP address. All it's getting is a localhost. Any ideas.

Hello all,

Thank you for your messages. I will definitely help you.

Graham, your case has been escalated to our Expert team and we are currently troubleshooting this issue. Jazz, your case is with one of our Support representatives if you have any questions about the case please let me know.

Norman, to resolve this issue please collect the following report from the bootable media and contact our Support team directly.

I apologize for not being able to provide you with updated bootable components but since build 3470 we changed our process and all hardware issues need to be investigated by our Support team. I am sorry for the inconvenience.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Thank you.

Hi

We have exact same problem with deploying on new dell laptop using PXE.
other laptops and desktop no problem.

I think it is problem with THE LOADER, and not network card, as it is clearly visible on screenshot that loader was downloaded and IP received.

haven't checked with standalone from CD tho..

Benjamin.

Same problem with the latest latitudes. It just doesnt like the new intel chipsets it would appear
I ve tested with a boot CD. It ll load, but as soon if you check the network adapters once it loads nothing is listed, thus it cant contact the Deployment server

Hi

I have create a little "report" of this problem with screenshots and actions i took to investigate this problem.

If i change in bios from RAID ON to AHCI, it does boot from PXE networ.
but then loader doesnt recognize network card, so i cant take ro put image to/from network.

exactly same situation with CDrom bootable CD.

Also, i am uploading Acronis Linux Report for Diagnostics from same Dell E6320 Laptop.

I have contacted Acronis SUpport and they sent me custom made bootable .iso file .
i have burned it and booted from it and it recognized netcard and all worked fine.
they told me that this fix will be included in next build of acronis 3.

hmmmmmm they still havent for myself yet :/
did they mention a time scale for release of the next build?

I've got the same issue with Dell 990 Computers.

I'm unable to boot with PXE when RAID is on. I've got the same error message that Graham :"Acronis Loader fatal error: At least 512 kb of conventional memory required to start acronis loader"

We need to find a workaround to this problem. This kind of machine will be produce for our customers soon.

Hi graham hirst,

unfortunately they didnt say when its coming out.
also, the .ISO they sent me has 'bad' drivers, which do not support 1GB link.
it took me 2.5 hours to deploy 7GB image on new e6520 dell!!!
on older chipset laptops (ex: e6510) it takes 8-10 minutes..

they also refuse to look deeper into the problem and fix the .iso file, so no workaround to this..
we are thinking to move to Norton Ghost enterprise, as support level of acronis is not so good..

I must admit of the 3 times i ve logged a call with acronis they ve been very lack luster, oftern taking weeks to get back to me

Hello all,

Thank you very much for your feedback.

We are working on a Knowledge Base article to resolve the "At least 512 kb of conventional memory required to start acronis loader" issue, as soon as we roll it our I will update the thread.

Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience and if you need additional help please let me know.

Thank you.

We received our first Dell 990 today and are having the same issue. We also went through this with the 980. We will be deploying close to 100 systems in 3 weeks and need response to this issue. Will there be a fix before then or do we need to look into other imaging options?

Hello all,

Thank you very much for your patience.

I would like to provide you with an update regarding the issue with this error message:

"Acronis Loader fatal error: At least 512 Kb of conventional memory required to start Acronis Loader"

It is caused by incorrect work of Intel RAID in BIOS. To correct this issue, in the computer BIOS, change SATA Operation mode from RAID On to any other mode. As a workaround, you can use Acronis Bootable Rescue Media to boot the machine instead of Acronis PXE Server.

Please check this for additional information:

 - Boot from Acronis PXE Server Fails with "Acronis Loader fatal error: At least 512 Kb of conventional memory required to start Acronis Loader"

Let me know if you have additional questions please.

Thank you.

Unfortunely this is no where near a solution for us since as previously posted i was fully aware of this.
We need to use the raid config for performance and not using the PXE boot robs us of the very function we purchased Acronis for

Having the same problems with Dell Optiplex 990 being unable to detect a network card. Changing the BIOS settings from RAID to Legacy mode allowed it to finally see the hard drive, but there is no NIC detected so I can't use the boot CD. Using a freshly downloaded copy of Build #13544 for my boot CD.

NIC not recognized! Does Acronis DB & DR build 13545 contain the Intel 82579 LM NIC drivers associated with the Dell Optiplex 990

We only just recently made a purchase of Optiplex 990's and over the past couple of days we have made some testing. We have tested the current available version of Snap Deploy 3.0 (build 3470) and we were having the same problem as you guys where the network does not get detected by Acronis. We were then sent an updated build (3481) and this detects the network card and we were able to make an image on gigabit.

After creating the image we attempted to deploy the image back to the machine but we had no success with this. The deploy agents detects the network card but as Benjamin said earlier in this thread, is extremely slow or does not work at all. We tried this on gigabit initially but went back to 100mbps to test. Same problem. It's not just for the Optiplex 990's either but every image and machine type.

Since attempting this, we have installed Snap Deploy 4.0 BETA and it works perfectly fine. Although since it's a beta and not fully released yet we are unable to use the Snap Deploy 3.0 keys in the 4.0 beta. I have attempted to use the ramdisk and kernel from 4.0 in version 3.0 but version 4.0 does not work with 3.0.

At this stage the only working solution is to use the 4.0 beta but there are not enough beta keys to use it in a corporate environment. I would assume this is the same case for ACRONIS DB & DR.

Just updating you guys where I am at and if anyone has any solution that would be appreciated. Acronis, any word on a new update?

Thanks for your post and your feedback, ITDTGS.

Do you know how I can obtain a key for snap deploy 4.0 beta, it interest me?

Hello, Mathieu!
To obtain a key for Acronis Snap Dpeloy 4.0 Beta you need join the beta program by following this link: http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/snapdeploy/beta/.
We hope you will join this beta program and are looking forward to hear back from you.
We'll greatly appreciate if you spend few minutes for passing our survey http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3JGG5JS

Lots of users have this problem: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/20626
Is it really possible to use over 2 month to create a new build to support this NIC?

Well technically they already have it in the build of their next major release....
Me thinks as a result fixing it in this build is a low priority for them as they rather wait for that to be released out of beta
Very very poor support since more and more of their customers are complain and their software is supposed to be a business solution. Time is money after all and at the moment i and a number of others consider their support to be a joke. So why should i renew maintenance costs if this is the level of service i get?

Hello all,

Thank you for your feedback.

I apologize for all the trouble and if you like you can contact our Management team directly via this e-mail address. We are always open to suggestions and new ideas.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Thank you.

Hello, we just received a bunch of Dell Optiplex 990's. We are running build 3329. We are unable to boot using the bootable cd's from this build. Is there a new bootable ISO that supports these 990's?

Thanks,

Hi.
I have the same problem like Benjamin Shtark (post #10).
Dell Latitude e6320. Error E000101F4 Acronis Has Not Found Any Hard Disk Drives. i change in bios RAID to AHCI and ATA.
Thanks.

Hello. We had the same problem using Snap Deploy 3 to deploy Windows 7 on 35 Dell Optiplex 990 (with 128 GB SSD HDD). No NIC detected.
We solved using Snap Deploy 4 beta 203.
It worked!

still getting the same issue with 4. though it appears to be raid specific

Same issue as all above...

Using Snap Deploy 3 PXE with Dell Optiplex 990 and results in no NIC support. I need a resolution for PXE booting with network support for this models NIC ASAP. There needs to be a permanent solution until the final release of version 4. Please help me out Anton!!!

Hi ya,

My issue has been somewhat resolved. The nic will work in 4. The pxe boot will not. If you create bootable media via a dvd you can load acronis and deploy/take an image. However pxe boot wont work on the machine. Apparently this is a problem with the intel raid in that it takes up all of the bios memory and prevent any pxe software from loading

I was able to get Snap Deploy 3 (Build 3501) to work with our new OptiPlex 990's by disabling Management Engine BIOS Extension (MEBx) from the Boot Options (F12) menu. MEBx sort of sits in between the NIC and the computer to allow remote management and I think it interferes with how Acronis communicates with the Agent over the network. I've also had issues with random system reboots with our older Dells that worked fine after turning off MEBx.

Setting SATA mode to RAID still gives the "512kb" error, but ATA and AHCI work fine and the Agent no longer reboots while loading. Since our systems only have one hard drive, there's not much point in enabled RAID anyway.

I'm not sure if MEBx comes standard on all 990's, but here are the steps to disable it.

• Access MEBx via F12
• Enter the default MEBx password which is "admin".
• Create a new password when prompted. (Don't forget this one, I don't think it can be reset. At least not easily.)
• Select 'Intel AMT Configuration' (second option)
• Now select 'Manageability Feature Selection'. You'll get a warning message about how changing this option will reset the NIC ACLs (This is what we want).
• Just press 'Y'
• Now select 'Disabled'
• Exit the MEBx menu and the system will reboot.

No more MEBx to get in the way.

Brent you genius!

Cheers for posting :)

Well it worked at first on our Snap Deploy server. Now I can't get it to work again. Loading from PXE just hangs now. I have no idea what changed.

Also, Master Image Creator does not allow saving the image to a network path.

This is very frustrating. It works and then it doesn't. I've got 66 Optiplex 990's to image and it looks like I may be doing this one at a time. :(

I'm going to have to try the version 4 beta I guess.