OS Selector under DD11Home -- can't boot: "missing configuration files"

You could boot to the DD CD and try reactivating OSS.

MudCrab:

you are in the correct half of the plane, but nowhere near the correct angle and range.

for the record, the exact wording of the failed-boot screen is: "Acronis Loader: No configuration file present. Press to reboot ..." .. pressing repeats this ad infinitum.

i ACTIVATED oss 4 times, REPAIRED oss 2 times, and UPDATED DD 2 times. each of these eight attempts resulted in this second failed-boot screen message: "Starting Acronis Loader. No commands for rebooting operating system. Press to reboot" (and so on ... ad infinitum)

i tried different configurations in the Properties Dialog Box, and finally, after having sputtered through at least 5 failures, the damn thing is working!

.... but to what use !! : DD11 and its corresponding OSS do not recognize the Solaris ZFS file system -- now i'm in worse of a bind than before because i need a way to manipulate Solaris partitions !!! what are the consequences of DEACTIVATing oss, one of the (theoretically-functioning) options ? can i DEACTIVATE oss, then use a competitor partitioning software to manipulate the Solaris ZFS domain, and then re-ACTIVATE the Acronis oss?

anyway, DD and OSS appear to be working -- but i might return to ground zero by the next cold reboot ... i'll keep you posted if you're interested.

btw, will DD and OSS function within a virtualizing environment?

OSS 11 seems to have a lot more problems staying activated and finding its files than OSS 10 did.

You should be able to deactivate OSS and select the OS you want to use as the default.

I've used DD and OSS quite a lot in VMWare Workstation and they work okay there. I haven't used anything with ZFS so I don't have any suggestions for that.

Using OSS doesn't stop you from using DD or another partitioning program to make partitioning changes. In general, you don't want to make changes to more than one OS's partitions at a time so OSS can more easily keep up with the changes. Also, it's recommended to have a current backup image of the drive before making partitioning changes (regardless of the program used).

as predicted -- by both you and me -- a cold reboot resulted in this bootup message:

Starting Acronis Loader ...
No commands for booting operating system. Press "" to reboot ...

i will not insert the "Bootable Media" CD everytime i bootup -- your solution http://forum.acronis.com/forum/30211 is unacceptable -- this is a bloody, aggravating annoyance and an oxymoron: i'm employing OSS to *avoid* the necessity of separate booting disks.

so, it seems that the best course of action for me would be to uninstall DD11 and its OSS: DD11 cannot manipulate ZFS so it's worthless to me, and the sub-OSS does not function at all, so *that* is worthless to me. i will use Revo Uninstaller Pro to uninstall DD11 .. or should i use another strategy: i don't see an acronis uninstall mechanism listed under either DD11 or OSS.

can i install OSS10 as a standalone (without DD10)?

and btw, your solution at http://forum.acronis.com/forum/30211 states: "disable the OSS service that automatically reactivates OSS" (or "disabling the Acronis OS Selector activator service") -- can you explain how to do this (this is apparently different from deactivating OSS)?

and finally, you state on this latter page, that OSS can --and should -- be installed on *a non-os* partition -- are you suggesting that i create a partition of a few MBs? what features should this partition have (eg, should it be formatted? as what?) why are you recommending that OSS be located on a non-os partition?

There should be an option to uninstall DD from the Control Panel (Uninstall a program).

You can install OSS using the OSS CD. OSS doesn't have to be installed in Windows. I don't know if you'd have any better success with OSS 10 compared to OSS 11.

The Acronis OS Selector activator service is in the list of Windows Services. You can get to it by clicking the Start button, right-clicking on Computer, selecting Manage, then expand Services and Applications and click on Services.

I recommend installing OSS to a non-OS partition because it seems to have less problems that way. Files on an OS partition (especially Windows) can get moved around a lot. The partition can be a data partition or a dedicated partition (can be small, like 150-200MB). Another reason is that if you later restore the OS partition with the OSS files (for example, Windows gets corrupted), you end up restoring old OSS files and may have to reinstall to fix it.

Bravo, Sir MudCrab!

Thank You.