backup fails

Hello Leroy!

Welcome to Acronis Forum, we're glad to greet you here! I understand your concern, and will do my best to help you.

Unfortunately due to the lack of sufficient investigation information it's hard to say for sure what's wrong. The product may hang on Initializing for different reasons. These issues have different solutions. Please find the instructions in the following KB articles:

• Product stalls at "Initialize..." when starting up
• Product stalls at "Initialize..." when starting up in Vista

These steps should help to resolve the problem. Should it remain, please gather the diagnostic information as mentioned in the articles.

I would also appreciate if you could give us more details on the system not recognizing serial key: what exactly you're doing, does it give you any error?

Should you need anything else or have any further questions - feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience, we will be happy to help you!

Thank you!