[RESOLVED] USB Drives No Longer Recognised in Windows Explorer

Welcome to the club

First try to use a Windows 7 restore point from before you installed ATIH 2012

www.computerworld.com/s/article/9221540/How_to_Repair_a_Corrupt_Windows_7_Installation

be prepared to spend about 6 hours on this one

Post removed as i didnt read that you had carried out the supposed fix already.

Pete

Kilkenny,
You might try this fix. This may also be what Pete was going to suggest--but I cannot speak for him.

http://kb.acronis.com/content/26062

GroverH wrote:

Kilkenny,
You might try this fix. This may also be what Pete was going to suggest--but I cannot speak for him.

http://kb.acronis.com/content/26062

Hi Grover
That was what i was going to suggest, but if you read his post he has already tried this fix :-(

Pete

I have tried that, yes, but thanks for trying to help anyway. :-)

Ed B, Thanks, I'll give that a try. I think I've exhausted all the other options.

Consider using one of your 2011 backups and restore your drive C or the entire disk back to when 2011 was installed.

edit: If you do the restore, do it when booted from the TI bootable Rescue CD.

Kilkenny,

It is a next to the last resort and is time consuming, but it beats a complete reinstall.

Please report back on whether it worked for you or not.

Thanks

Thanks, I will.

Anything beats a complete reinstall - I really want to avoid that if I can. That wouldn't just be hours wasted, but days. Given the time I've already spent on this, another 6 hours or so is not so bad!

Dear Kilkenny,

If it is any solace I have exactly the same problem as you. After installing THI 2011, no USB storage devices can be seen in Windows Explorer, device drivers show as "code 39" and they are invisible in the Disk Management function of the Computer Management Tool.

I am on an HP laptop, using Windows Home Premium 64-bit.

Frankly I had good luck with THI 2010 but since then trying to install THI 2012, then downgrading to THI 2011 has caused me NOTHING but trouble. I have used the Clean-up Utility and reinstalled several times. First I got immediate bsod's upon the first reboot after the install (after which I restored to earlier restore point in order to recover), now I do get an installation but cannot mount any USB devices. (Oh yes I have also tried KB 26062 "fix" to no avail. Ugh.)

Not sure if this is a hint, but USB devices which are NOT storage devices mount properly. I can mount a wireless mouse transmitter, also a Logitech headset without problems. One more possible clue, I can mount a eSata drive without problem, although it does not appear any longer to be hot-swappable, I must have it plugged in at boot time for it to be recognized by Windows Explorer.

This is very very maddening. I spent many hours trying to get THI to work. (Actually it works fine now but then again I cannot use my USB ports!!!) I am really disappointed with Acronis. I am giving this one more try, if I cannot get THI to work AND my USB ports to work, I am going to trash this program and never ever use an Acronis product again!

Ed B, well the repair install didn't work, though in fairness to Acronis I couldn't run it. My Win 7 professional disk must not be a full retail version. I was offered the choice of an in place upgrade to Win 7 Ultimate for some crazy price, or a full reinstall. Have wasted so much time trying to fix it that I might as well waste the next three days setting everything up again and know that TIH 2012 is completely gone. My programs are gone, but at least my usb mass storage is showing in device manager and computer again. Thnx again for the suggestion though.

Grover H, I would have tried restoring from a TIH 2011 backup, but they are on external usb drive - Catch 22.

Dennis, yep, usb printers, keyboard, mouse, etc all work fine. Device manager shows all the usb ports themselves as working, it's just the mass storage drivers, which includes card readers and flash drives. Haven't tried an eSata drive but it will use different drivers, I guess. I've used ATI since I can't remember when, and a much earlier version saved me when I had a major hardware failure. That version was simple and efficient. I wasn't thrilled with 2011, which is why I upgraded to 2012, but at least 2011 didn't render my computer practically inoperable. 2012 seems to be a train wreck. It takes a real talent to make each successive version worse than the last. Good luck (sincerely) with getting TIH 2012 and your usb drives running. I would have to be forced at gunpoint before I would try installing it again. I'm looking for an alternative, if anyone knows a good one.

If this has been asked somewhere and answered, sorry for the repetition, but does anyone know if this is only a problem in 64 bit Windows?

Perhaps I missed an earlier fact, but why not restore your system (using System Restore) to an earlier point in time before you installed THI? If Acronis does not come up with a fix for us, then I will Uninstall Acronis, restore to an earlier restore point, use the clean-up utility (just in case), and then say goodbye to Acronis forever. I too have used their products for a long time, and yes they had saved me too at least once big time, but we cannot jeopardize our systems over this kind of nonsense.

I too will be looking for the best possible replacement. It is going to be difficult to find a feature set as good as THI, but hey there you have it, if it doesn't work it doesn't work. Ugh.

I sure hope Acronis has a fix! Acronis, are you there??

Kilkenny,

Sorry that didn't work and I hope it didn't cost too much time trying it. It did work for me but I guess it depends on which version of windows install disk you have.

Did you try to restore your 2011 backup using the downloadable boot ISO?

As an alternative may I suggest that you look at the backup that comes with Windows 7. If your needs are not too complex and you can live with one scheduled backup per day, it seems to work fine and doesn't damage your system. Again this is my experience.

Also since you already have a license for 2012 and earlier versions, download the ISO boot disk for standalone cloning.

Hi Ed and Kilkenny,

This is the third (and final time) for me to (try to) install THI. Each time I have been able to uninstall THI and restore (to an earlier restore point) successfully, and then the USB ports function normally once again. It takes me about 10 mins to do the restore (I don't know where that 6 hours estimate comes from) and then I have been back on the road again. And it doesn't require any W7 master disks. Just execute the program 'System Restore' and go back to a restore point prior to your installing that nasty rotten frustrating ridiculous THI ! /end rant

I apologize though if you had already discussed doing this, perhaps I missed some earlier message as to why Kilkenny cannot or could not do it...

I'm still waiting for Acronis to pipe in here. It seems that their long respected product is getting panned and pummeled, and I don't hear from them. Rather strange.

Cheers,
Dennis

Dennis,

No apology necessary, we are all just sharing our experiences.

He already tried restore points and was still having problems.

The solution of doing an update to Windows 7 on a system that is already running windows 7 was intended to maybe save him some time and avoid a complete reinstall of Windows 7 from scratch and then reinstalling all the rest of his software, which is what he ended up needing to do anyway.

My own experience was that after playing with TIH 2012 for several days, I no longer had a restore point that worked. So faced with a complete reinstall or the update in place, I chose the later. I feel it saved me days of work.

The 6 hours is how long it took me to run the update, on a pretty fast system with lots of memory. I know it seems long, that is why I gave the warning. I agree, using a restore point is a ten minute job.

Good Luck
Ed

Ed B wrote:

My own experience was that after playing with TIH 2012 for several days, I no longer had a restore point that worked.
Ed

Yeah, that was pretty much my position, too. In retrospect, I should have just done a system restore right away instead of messing around trying to fix it. Or had more disk space devoted to restore points. Or something.

The update in place would have been great - 6 hours or so would have been nothing compared with the days I'm faced with now.

The usb issue seems to be so common that I find it incredible that it wasn't discovered and fixed before TIH 2012 was released.

I find it rather incredible, too. One thing to note, though, is that the problem is not contained solely in THI 2012. In my case it also plagues 2011. Although in my case I had installed TIH2012 to disastrous effect (bsod upon rebooting after installation) that I immediately uninstalled it (by restoring an earlier restore point). Even after clean-up, I think something was still left around, because while I could re-install TIH 2011, it cripples my USB ports.

Have you tried any of the solutions reference in a goggle search for
  delete usb controllers

Thanks Grover for your suggestion. I deleted all the devices in the Universal Serial Bus Controller section, and allowed Windows to reinstall them, but alas no luck. The only thing which seems to be able to revive the USB ports is to remove TIH. I chatted with Acronis support twice today, one time during which they did a remote support session with my machine, and they are still scratching their heads and have escalated the problem to "level 2 support" so we shall see. Alas I am quickly coming to the end of my patience with this. I will hang on a little longer and see if the 'level 2' can rescue me but my optimism is quickly fading.

If you do get a working solution, Dennis, from support or anywhere else, please post and let us know. And good luck!

1) Install Revo Uninstaller Pro
2) Go into TIH and stop nonstop backup and delete storages, stop any scheduled backups, logout from Acronis, and make sure you also stop online backup
3) In Windows Task Manager, make sure to click the button to show processes for all users, sort the description column by name, then terminate any acronis and True Image processes you find
4) Choose the Services tab and stop any services that are for acronis and True Image
5) Do a 'force uninstall' using Revo
a) In the dialog that appears,enter the name 'Acronis' in the 'Program's Exact Name' field, continue
b) Choose the Acronis installer (or .msi) in the next dialog, and let Revo control the uninstall
c) When completed, on the next dialog do the scan
d) select all and delete everything that the scan shows you...it can be hundreds of items. Just delete them all, Revo has never failed me
e) When completed, reboot.

Hopefully, you'll now have your system back. And from now on, whenever you're going to install an Acronis product, let Revo monitor the install: Download the installer from Acronis, right click the icon, select the option to have Revo monitor the install. This way, when you need to eventually uninstall the product, Revo will have a complete record of every byte and registry key added or changed in your machine and will reverse all of them.

Too late for me now, David, as I had already done a full reinstall of Win 7. Good advice, all the same. As it happens, I have already installed Revo in the course of rebuilding my system - taking every precaution now against any piece of software messing up the system like that again.

I assume Kilkenny that the USB ports sprang back to life, and storage volumes mount properly, after reinstalling W7? I might just have to do a full install myself. Of course, if I do, I will NOT install ATIH! In fact I will have a ceremonial burning of the product in my backyard -- given the hours and hours of struggle which this product has caused me.

In the meantime, stubbornly, I am still holding on to the hope that there is someone somewhere you knows enough about how USB storage devices work, and how they are specified in the registry, to rescue me. I really don't want to take a week to reinstall W7, which is pretty much what it would take to get things back in order.

It's a "known issues" problem, Dennis. It is not any specification that is normal to the Windows registry per se. The problem is CurrentControlSet insertions by the Acronis installer for device class (DiskDrive and Volume) upper and lower filters that utilize services and their drivers required by the Acronis product itself. It's those filter drivers that are having problems with some USB devices recognition and that will have to be fixed by Acronis. Fiddling with the registry won't help and could put you into a much worse situation.

Yes Richard you are right. I am very timid when coming to changing any registry settings.

Well I cannot believe that the filter drivers are having problems with "some USB devices' recognition" as I have tried a whole host of different USB storage devices, and NONE are seen in Windows Explorer or Disk Management, including the card reader which is of course itself a USB device. Also, in my case, I can mount volumes via the eSata port (which in fact is keeping me alive at the moment!) So it must have to do more with compatibility with the Universal USB Controller itself, and not the devices, right? All USB storage devices I try to mount end up with the ugly "yellow triangle" in Device Manager, and the equally despicable "code 39" error message in their Properties.

So I guess the question now is, it is reasonable to assume that Acronis is going to solve this problem (it must be a really nasty problem to have taken this long to try to fix!), or is it time to reinstall windows and once-and-for-all trash Acronis products forever more? The latter would be a pity but I can't hold on too much longer! ATIH has a great feature set; it is just too bad it doesn't work!!

I'm obviously guessing a bit, but perhaps the Acronis driver problem applies at the USB controller level which would widen its scope in any given case. If your BIOS has anything like a "USB legacy support" setting, you could try that. As for your if/when question, your guess is as good as mine.

I don't have the USB problem that is mentioned in this thread, but for information purposes, my setup is -

Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H motherboard with NEC USB3 D720200F1 controller and the SB850 USB2.0 controller/south bridge.

Dennis Streveler wrote:

I assume Kilkenny that the USB ports sprang back to life, and storage volumes mount properly, after reinstalling W7? I might just have to do a full install myself. Of course, if I do, I will NOT install ATIH! In fact I will have a ceremonial burning of the product in my backyard -- given the hours and hours of struggle which this product has caused me.

That's how it worked for me, Dennis. After the reinstall, storage volumes mount properly, my card readers work again, flash drives mount as drives. Great relief and rejoicing all round. Except for the wasted time - hours spent trying to get ATIH 2012 to work, days spent returning my computer to what it was before - which I can't get back.

I didn't have any hesitation in editing the registry, once I'd tried every other fix. I removed Device Class filters, Services and drivers (in that order) related to Acronis. It definitely made things worse in my case. It just left me with a Windows installation that wouldn't even start.

As far as I can tell, the problem was only with "some usb devices" insofar as the drivers for the usb controllers seemed to be functioning correctly and my usb wireless keyboard, mouse and 2 printers all still worked. But NO usb storage device would mount - in my case, none of 3 external hard drives, no internal or external card readers and no flash drives.

Just to add to what David said, make sure that in TIH you also terminate the startup recovery manager - I failed to do that and it nuked me. Also, the ATIH removal KB article (forget which number) also tells you to deintegrate the ATIH from the Windows Backup and Restore. That would not work for me - it would not deintegrate, but it was failing to turn off the startup recovery manager in ATIH which left me with a non-booting boat anchor that could only be recovered by booting from my Acronis boot disk and doing a complete restore of my partition backup. In my case, the system restore points would not restore correctly, even though I had made one immediately prior to trying to uninstall ATIH2012, and I had other recent restore points as well that also failed.

ATIH 2012 is not easy to get rid of. I trashed two computers in one moring: trying to uninstall it from one computer, and trying to uninstall from a second computer to install the new build. No more Acronis products for this puppy!

Have a great day.

Regards,
-Phil

>>As far as I can tell, the problem was only with "some usb devices" insofar as the drivers for the usb controllers seemed to be functioning correctly and my usb wireless keyboard, mouse and 2 printers all still worked. But NO usb storage device would mount - in my case, none of 3 external hard drives, no internal or external card readers and no flash drives.

Yes, exactly write NON storage devices are recognized without any problem by the USB controller -- in my case, wireless mouse, scanner, etc. But NO storage device (I have a number of USB sticks, USB external drives) are mounted.

One interesting clue -- I have 2 Apple devices, an ipod and an ipad. The ipod is set to "enable hard disk storage" in iTunes so that it can mount as a volume, where the ipad is not. Interesting the ipad connects normally, the ipod doesn't mount as a hard disk nor does iTunes show it as a device. I think this is more evidence that the problem has to do with USB storage devices and not all USB devices.

I sure hope Acronis comes up with a fix soon!

Maybe the info at http://www.usbman.com/Troubleshooter%20General.htm will help to explain how USB storage devices can be affected at the controller and BIOS level. Keep in mind also the comment by Acronis Vice President of R&D, Alain Gentilhomme: "I wish our software would just work on top of Windows and we could rely on the operating system to completely abstract the hardware for us but this is not the case." In other words, Acronis drivers need to bypass the Windows hardware abstaction layer (HAL) for certain functions and may thus be affected quite differently by various system components and their "deep" configurations. I think they're trying with some non-public driver versions, but have no solid info on progess.

Hello Richard,

Maybe it is time for me to send an email to Monsieur Alain??

I understand that Windows is far from transparent, and I understand that vendors, especially those, because of the nature of their applications, have to dig deep into the OS levels in order to hook their product to the OS, but nonetheless at the very least IMHO the vendor should assure that it can reverse its "damage" when it occurs. In my case, the first two System Restores were able to rescue my OS from its ills, and get my ports working again. Later on, and as of now, I guess I cannot go back far enough and thus my system is rendered seriously crippled as a result of Acronis' "experiments" resulting from 3 "chats" with Acronis' support "help".

I will read the "usbman" link you kindly sent me, and see if I can get any new clues, but I am fast coming to the conclusion that, like some others we have heard from in the forum, the only real solution might be to reload the OS. This is a HUGE price to pay for installing someone's software!!!

Acronis "chat" support has twice promised to escalate my problem to "Level 2" support, and that I would get an email from that level. It has NEVER occurred. I guess that promise is just a way that support has to get rid of its troublesome customers whose machines they have wrecked. This really is not acceptable.

I hope you don't mind but I am attaching my "DriverDetails" once again. Does it really seem correct that 3 versions of the Acronis drivers would be referenced here?

Sure looks screwy to me. I don't think the device class should be loading two filters at once (vsflt58.sys and vsflt63.sys) but, frankly, I'm so confused by the Acronis' class filtering arrangements and their various revisions and permutations at this point that I wouldn't offer any guesses about any of it. It wouldn't even surprise me much if they themselves are getting confused and losing track of the situation.

The "cleanup" tool guys are going to have a real challenge by the time they're finished with all of this. There'll be "blue screens" from here to next Tuesday and the poor techies are going to stage an armed revolt. This is a "rescue" utility?! What an ungodly mess!

Hello Everyone, I want to update all of you on the topic.

We have created a fix for it and at the moment testing it. Fix requires update of the drivers we ship with the product, therefore we need some time to make sure everything is after patch is installed. There are some forum member who were interesting in getting the patch before we publish it. I have sent the link and install instructions to these guys. If someone else is interested to take a look, please let me know, I'll send the same for you.

Thank you to all of you for the patience and please accept my apologies for the inconvenience.

Just curious, Roman, but do you think that this next update might just possibly improve on the longstanding Acronis issue of outdated "leftovers" in the registry and on the system drive that can produce such versioning issues as noted here, among many others? In other words, do you foresee any possibility at all that, henceforth, normal Windows update operations, or normal Windows uninstall operations, or both might actually get rid of Acronis filters-drivers and related services that should no longer be there? Or would that be too much to hope for?

In my own case, I ALWAYS install any Acronis products only after a very thorough cleanup and detailed inspection of my system's CurrentControlSet. I NEVER rely on them to handle their own installs/updates/uninstalls automatically like most other installer packages. That's fine for me and others like me, and I expect that most of Acronis' beta testers, having long experience with the historical quirks and potential pitfalls, probably do likewise. But attracting more customers with "limited experience" as your VP suggests is only going to exacerbate the problems unless and until those MSI package handling issues are dealt with.

Hello Richard,

It is not that easy, there are number of cases when it is safer to keep the drivers installed or just leave the binary to keep system safe. Here is a short description of it:

There are number of drivers installed within ATIH. After ATIH uninstall we keep driver on the system in 2 different way:

1. We keep only binaries of the files.
This way we do for all drivers, because of the possibility in windows to create different profiles. In this case ATIH can be installed under different profiles and may be linked to the same set of drivers. So, if we remove drivers in one profile, then user may face a BSOD in another profile. Therefore in this case to keep the driver binary on the system is safer.
2. We keep the full driver. That is applicable only to 2 drivers: virual disk(vidsflt, vsflt61.sys) and fltsrv. First one is required for big disks(Extended capacity), if we remove it from the system with big disk, then user will not be able to access data from the end of the disk. This is required for old controllers which firmware is not updated to handle big drivers. Second one is required for new Snapapi work and we keep it to support a case when there are several Acronis products installed and they all uses Snapapi.

So would running the cleen up utility in all accounts, or somthing like Revo Uninstaller cleen up this (mess).

It does look to my novice eye a right mess thats been created!

I have installed a "running" version of true image home 2012. After the installation and reboot i got a blue screen. After restart with the last running version of windows ATIH 2012 works with some issues. I have access to my usb sticks.
Now I installed build 6131 to fix some errors. After reboot i have no access to my usb sticks.
The fix from 26062 did not work for me. The usb sticks are still not available. The two drivers are installed successfully. I tried it 3 times (2 hours of work). This is a nice pc adventure.
Hint: my mobile phone is recognized via usb.
Greetings, Bernhard

Roman Alyoshkin wrote:

It is not that easy, there are number of cases when it is safer to keep the drivers installed or just leave the binary to keep system safe.

Safer, Roman? Sorry, but that must be one of the most preposterous claims I've seen yet! Safer than what?!!! Safer for whom?!!!

The point is that my system was in a completely safe and stable condition before ATIH was installed. All three (3) of its multiboot operating systems were handling all hardware devices and components (including USB, eSATA, and all the rest) without any errors of any kind whatsoever. I'm simply asking that, when ATIH is uninstalled, my system, and most especially its registry's control set values, be returned to the same safe and stable condition that it was in before. That's all. Seems to me like a perfectly reasonable request and a normal expectation for any well designed and engineered software product, let alone one that claims to be providing system protection and rescue insurance.

Basically, boiled down to its essentials, your answer says that the Acronis team simply cannot figure out how to do that and never will. In other words, once a user allows Acronis to take over the handling of his DiskDrive and Volume device classes from his operating system's hardware abstaction layer, that's it. He's screwed insofar as any ordinary Windows method for reversion to normal handling of storage devices is concerned.

If you are saying that Acronis considers that answer to be an appropriate and safe(!) response to the many user experiences posted in these forums about the disastrous consequences, I can only say that I very strongly disagree. To me, in fact, it sounds a lot like system sabotage on a wide scale. And that's without even considering any of the less obvious corollary issues which, as I'm sure you know very well, are innumerable.

Compute with confidence, indeed! What sad irony that slogan has become!

Richard do you think Revo Uninstaller in each account could clear up the mess or is it too fundamental for even this to get it cleared up?

Sorry, John, but I can't really answer your question with any confidence as the Revo Uninstaller is beyond my own personal experience. What is really required is something that accurately tracks the specific system changes that are made by the Acronis installer package(s) and that is thus able to reverse them exactly and precisely without damaging anything else in the process.

The people who would be best able to accomplish that task would be the Acronis developers themselves -- or so one would think and expect -- but apparently it's too difficult ("not that easy") for them and they seem to have given up even trying. Whether Revo is smart enough to be able to compensate in the circumstances, I'm afraid I'm just not able to say. Reports by others seem to suggest that results vary somewhat. There have certainly been some successes, but also some indications that it doesn't always find what it's looking for.

Personally, I rely on my own manual tracking and reversal processes which include "before and after" registry exports and comparisons among other things. But that's not a solution for everyone. If I get it wrong, I have no one to blame but myself and I also keep "belt and suspenders" backups to be sure. So far, no thanks to Acronis, my own occasional screw-ups haven't been irreversible. :^)

Could I suggest to Acronis that at the first screen of the installation process give this warning:

"Because of the nature of a back-up application like ATIH, it is forced to make invasive registry changes to your operating system. If you do not wish to continue, please exit now! If you do wish to continue, please make sure that you have fully backed-up your system in advance and/or created a System Restore point through which you can reset your registry if for some reason:

1. Your USB ports are no longer usable
2. You received a system fault ("blue screen of death") upon rebooting after the installation, or
3. ...

While not everyone experiences these phenomenon, please be warned that the consequences can be disastrous to the stability and usability of your computer, so extraordinary precautions on your part are in order."

This is not meant to be a farce. People should be warned if a company knows that its product might mess up your computer system through your attempt to install or uninstall its products, don't you think? Then the customer can decide whether to take the risk or not.

In my case, if I had not waited so long that a viable Restore Point was no longer available, I would have saved myself many many hours of grief. But I really had no clue that I was about to set myself off on this "adventure".

If Acronis isn't even going to try to do anything about it themselves, perhaps we all need to get something like EventTracker WhatChanged for monitoring and managing our systems. See http://www.eventtracker.com/products/whatchanged/ . In essence, it does automatically what I've been doing manually to protect my own system from "sabotage" by rogue installer packages that can't (or won't) undo their own system altering mess.

If such an external application is capable of doing that job for software installations and other change events in general, one would think that doing it for a specific products group should be well within the capabilities for its own R&D team. What say you about that, Alain Gentilhomme? What's "not that easy" about it anyhow?

Revo Uninstaller is supposed to track all the changes during software install. I am wondering whether it tracks accurately all the stuff that ATI installs.

Probably the same general principles, more or less, Pat. I'm just more familiar with WhatChanged capabilities having used the "professional" version in the past. It also provides a freeware edition.

It just ticks me off that ANY third-party utility should be needed to handle what the Acronis installer packages should track and manage for themselves. The "too difficult" excuse just doesn't fly so far as I'm concerned, especially considering the wide-ranging disastrous consequences for so many innocent victims, most of whom are totally unaware of the potential consequences even for trial installations on their systems. And I'm quite sure that what we see here is just the tip of a huge iceberg including many more subtle effects on systems stability and performance.

I am wondering if these programs would work using a repair install to track an existing install for uninstalling it.

As mentioned, I'm only familiar with WhatChanged, but it tracks the actual changes that are made both in the registry and on disc. Its tracking record would include whatever changes occured after it was installed, but not before. It seems unlikely, therefore, that an Acronis repair install alone, done only after installing WhatChanged, would result is a complete differential picture of everything that was altered by the original Acronis installation.

My guess would be the same for the Revo Uninstaller, but someone else will have to supply any authoritative answer for that one.

In either case, even a partial record would be better than none at all and might provide sufficent data for the removal process. Even so, it's still just a "workaround" for the lack of a real solution by the people responsible for the problem in the first place. It's certainly no help for those who innocently install Acronis trial versions without any idea of what they're getting into. As I said elsewhere, once Acronis inserts its tentacles, even for trial installations, it doesn't cede the conquered territory easily -- neither to alternative applications, nor to the operating system itself.

Hello Richard,

I'm sorry for the delay with the answer. I'm not saying that we will not do change that behavior, i'm describing you the current situation.

Let's go one case to another. There are 2 drivers which are not being removed from the system, because in a lot of configurations windows does not see drives bigger then 2 TB, ATIH install drivers for it and you are able to use the devices. You may store data there, etc. So, if we remove these drivers, then user will not have access to the device space above 2Tb, so basically he will loos his data.

As for the rest drivers, they are removed and only binaries of these drivers are left. it is not loaded at system start and so on.

As for USB device issue, this is a bug and we are working on it right now, I have already sent the new pack of drivers to several users from the forum and got some feedback. Once we are ready to publish it, we will release it. I was hopping to get it done on the previous week, but looks like there are still issue to resolve before going life.

Thanks for the response, Roman. So, am I to take that as assurance that the Aconis team IS now actually working on ways to restore systems to their prior unadulterated condition when ATIH is uninstalled in the normal way? If so, that's somewhat encouraging, although I have to add that it seems like a very late start to me and I can't help wondering when we might expect to see some concrete results. The primary concern, BTW, is not a few residual files. It's the damned registry pollution!

And do I also understand correctly that the major obstacle to your success with that task is a unique (and quite recent) situation where the ATIH installation has actually created a capability for >2 TB drive handling that was not present in the system configuration before ATIH was installed making reversion to the original setup impossible? If so, could you be a bit more specific about the nature of the irreversible alteration made by ATIH please. Are we talking about SCSI goo Read10/Write10 vs Read16/Write16, or increased cluster size above the minimum of 512 bytes, or GPT (Guid Partition Table) disk configuration? The 32-bit edition of Windows XP would be the only currently supported OS affected by the last-mentioned issue, would it not?

I don't quite understand why such an inherent system limitation should be considered necessary to change in the first place. Are many people really installing 3TB+ drives into systems that can't handle them and then demanding a "bailout" from Acronis? Or is it really just the same old problem of not being able to figure out how to restore the status quo ante? I'd hate to think that Acronis was deliberately leaving behind its own system control tentacles in all those trial user registries for ulterior motives.

[quote=Roman Alyoshkin

.....As for USB device issue, this is a bug and we are working on it right now, I have already sent the new pack of drivers to several users from the forum and got some feedback. Once we are ready to publish it, we will release it. I was hopping to get it done on the previous week, but looks like there are still issue to resolve before going life.

[/quote]

Hi,

I contacted support about this problem (usb on 2012) - the reply I received stated my support had expired and Acronis is therefore unable to provide any help until I purchase a further help subscription. Surely, as this is a known bug in TIH 2012, Acronis should be contacting it's customers to advise of the issue and informing them that a solution is being developed. I have 6 registered Acronis products and this is the response I get the first time I ask for support, for a "known bug".

Not the greatest in Customer Service.

Regards,
Gavin

Hello Richard,

Yes, you understand it correctly, here is an example of the problem:

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/beyond-2tb/

In short words, in order to see these drives, you need your BIOS to support UEFI. And yes, you are right, there are less people with 2TB drives, but number os those who has it is constantly increasing, so we do see a demand to support it.

Also going foward, we may implement some more intelligent algorithm of installing drivers if only such devices are detected, but imagine a case when it was disconnected(temporary for some reason), etc. So, we decided to choose a simple way. Also before putting that into a mainstream product, we have used these drivers in one of our oem solutions. Btw, you realize that the drivers we discuss are not linked to the USB problem, right? I'm just covering your questions about why we do not remove some drivers after uninstall.

Hi Gavin, if you are interested to get the fix before we publish it, please contact me by private message. The official fix is not ready yet.

Regards, Roman