Acronis 2020 takes an absolute age to start (Minutes)

Mike, welcome to these public User Forums.

Difficult to say why ATI 2020 is taking minutes to open the GUI when you launch it on your fast system?  It takes around 20-30 seconds on my Intel i7 laptop though it may have taken a little longer when used for the first time?

Did you update from ATI 2019, 2018 or an earlier version?
Did you have Acronis Active Protection enabled on your prior version of ATI?

Please contact me to resolve this or at least task some better programmers to write the code.

You will need to either use the Feedback tool provided in the ATI GUI or else open a Support Case direct with Acronis if you want someone to respond to the above line.  We are just users like yourself in the forum.

Hello

It was an update from 2019 to 2020.

Active Protection is witched off.

Mike

You might consider reporting this to Acronis support. 

There is something in the ATI GUI initialization that sometimes causes a delay.  There have been sporadic reports of this over the past few years - ATI 2017 and 2018, as I recall.  I never saw a fix or circumvention reported.  Then a year ago, in the 2019 Beta test, many of us  experienced horrible delays - many minutes - while "Loading User Settings " was displayed.  There was no explanation but it did not happen in the General Availability release.

My take on this is that there is something a bit fragile in the initialization code - something that is tricky to find and fix.  The more people that can report it an give specific details, the more likely it will eventually get fixed.

I too am seeing this. TI2020 upgraded from TI2016. AP is enabled. Stop watch used 22 seconds when if finished that stop point and opened. I closed it and re-opened it again and it did seem be faster, got to 13 seconds and opened? Odd?

Intel i7 3.4Ghz quad core, W10 V1903 x64, 8GB's of RAM, and C: is an SSD. Backup drive is an External USB 3.0 4TB disk.

Wife has a similar PC, but an Intel i7 3.2Ghz quad core, same thing (I recall, have not checked to be sure though).

Looked @ Task Manager, have 7 Acronis Tasks running after opening TI...

It's the modern-day business conundrum.

As the microprocessors get ever faster & faster, memory faster & faster, HD's (circular disks have gone) to SSD - Surely by now you'd honestly think a "back-up program" is such old-hat, it would work like night-follows-day...

But no - Give Acronis all these overwhelming speed-enhancing systems (which they didn't even need to design, develop or manufacture) and they still manage to make things slower...its as if "mission accomplished"...

That's quite an achievement...

After all, just about most of what it does and is asked to do is back-up files....This isn't rocket science...

For me, the programming incompetence is overwhelming..

The principal business problem is with their Millenials (programmers) who should remain at home until they're thirty-something and adult enough to get a proper task done!

I think we can safely assume that the delay in "Loading user setting" has nothing to do with a massive block of code that could be improved by faster CPU speed or more parallel threads.  And it probably has little to do with disk speed.  It probably has more to do with network speed - accessing NAS drives, accessing cloud storage, perhaps even determining if cloud storage is used.  And considering how tightly ATI is integrated with Windows code, there may be occasional delays waiting for locked Windows resources.

The slow initialization of the ATI GUI can be frustrating so I would recommend mentioning it to Acronis via the ATI Feedback function.  It's fairly certain Acronis is not purposefully trying to irritate customers, but it is also fairly certain that they do things to improve the performance.  Let them know an improvement is needed.

I agree with Patrick in that the slowness while the app loads user settings can be attributable to your network and possibly the number of disk drives in your total configuration.

I experience these delays myself and at one point during the BETA testing could not even get TI to load at all.  After much frustration and troubleshooting I discovered the problem for me, by and large, was a network issue.  I had a single network destination which ATI connection could not resolve and that halted the loading of the app.  Once that problem was fixed then the app worked much better. 

Loading times are still longer than I would like, approximately 20 seconds when the computer is first started to about 10 seconds after closing Ti and reopening.  I can live with it but I do understand the complaints being raised.

I would suggest that users experiencing such delays investigate there network for issues, especially name resolution, as possible causes for the slowness you witness.

I too find the delay in the GUI opening is frustrating. I am sure that when it loads it checks the attached storage (both internal and external [USB]) and possibly NAS and Cloud connections. The PC I am using at the moment has 11 drives - 2 x M.2 NVMe, 8 SATA and 1 USB. Today the GUI loaded much faster than it has been, not sure why that should be the case. Edit: The PC has an i5-9400 CPU and 16 gig of ram, and boots from NVMe SSD.

Also I suspect if all backups to NAS and Cloud, and the network connection is WIFI and using Notebook with older CPU (mine has and i7-6???? dual core CPU), but it does support ac WIFI, as does my router.

Ian

I didn't mean to start a firestorm on this. All I wanted to do was share my situation.

Normally I might have just mentioned this in an aside in a different problem I have (which I did). I've seen similar actions in some games, a long time opening. Some stop animation or music for a period of time. One for instance seems to be unpacking compressed files each time I play the game... but since there is no comparison to an older version of the game, well, it is just as it operates.

Not so with TI2020. It replaced TI2016 which didn't have this happening. Hence my remarks, as it does 'hang' in the same place for me.

I could very well be additional features, such as Active Protection, that was not in TI2020. Reading its Activity on my PC shows a 'problem' every day the PC is booted, RUNDLL32 was prevented from accessing the Registry. Nothing else is disclosed. Reading the AP Log is another eye opener. The time that the above was logged has NO help for more info in the log. Not only that, the log is filled with 'info', 'warning' and even errors in log. They are mixed too, where 'info' or 'warning' are really errors (error codes are shown on some).

For instance, on boot this appeared in the log:

2019-09-06 07:06:56.861044 6712 [warning]: Fail to query registry key SOFTWARE\Acronis\BackupAndRecovery\Settings\MachineManager\InstanceID. Error: The system cannot find the file specified.  (Win32 error code = 2)

The KEY doesn't exist. Install error or something else?

Followed by this:

2019-09-06 07:06:56.861044 6712 [error]: Failed to obtain Product InstanceID

Yet everything seems to still work?

When I open TI I see repeated log entries (open at or around 7:25AM:

2019-09-06 07:25:50.997994 11200 [info]: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\TrueImageLauncher.exe"'s certificate has been verified (cache)

2019-09-06 07:25:50.997994 6712 [info]: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\TrueImageLauncher.exe"'s certificate has been verified (cache)

2019-09-06 07:25:51.001999 11200 [info]: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\TrueImageLauncher.exe"'s certificate has been verified (cache)

I see this in the log, duplicate entries (why is it done twice?):

2019-09-06 07:25:51.009987 6712 [info]: "C:\Windows\System32\consent.exe"'s certificate has been verified (cache)
2019-09-06 07:25:51.167896 11200 [info]: "C:\Windows\System32\consent.exe"'s certificate has been verified (cache)

During boot time the log has a lot of entries too. It tries to access every drive and looks at every possible file extension. I'm sure it adds to my boot time (I'm up usually in 15 seconds or so).

Only thing that is clear to me, it does take a lot longer to open than TI2016.

I do have a case open with Support. Trying to find out about the RUNDLL32 error. First exchange was clear the responder didn't understand the question.

Irv,

Look HERE

Enchantech, thanks for the link. Problem is that the PROCESS doesn't exist when I'm looking. It happens during boot up only. I might be able to start Process Explorer and have it look for the process, but that isn't reliable as it changes from boot to boot. Maybe looking for RUNDLL32, but that too would be problematic if TI ran before PE... I've not tried that though. Went the 'file a report' router seeing if they had better suggestions.

Only constant seems to be the string of characters, but I can't find that anywhere either? Hoping that info Support might know what that is?

Well, AP scans all the time for behavior that is known to also be that of ransomware.  This rundll32.exe is doing just that.  Narrowing it down if possible will allow you to deal with it.  Could be a leftover from an uninstalled app you no longer have and deleting it can fix the issue.

Happens only at boot, no other time.

Keep in mind when booting up and/or logging in,Windows is starting several processes.  Acronis can't start processes until other Windows processes are active as well as some Acronis processes depend on other Acronis processes.  

I wold expect that starting AAP after boot would take longer than starting it after stopping and starting it at another time because it has less to compete with at that time.

I don't know what a reasonable start time is/should be.  For me - I don't really notice when AAP is active after reboot and log back in. When I launch Acronis True Image, it takes about 10 seconds, but AAP is generally already running at that point.

Has anyone attempted to run a "repair install" of ATI2020 to see if it helps?  It could be something cloogey from the previous ATI installs that didn't quite update correctly.  A lot of times, reinstalling the current version of True Image (download from your account and right-click and "run as administrator" even if logged in with an admin account already), then rebooting before the first use, can make things run more smoothly.

Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:

Has anyone attempted to run a "repair install" of ATI2020 to see if it helps?  It could be something cloogey from the previous ATI installs that didn't quite update correctly.  A lot of times, reinstalling the current version of True Image (download from your account and right-click and "run as administrator" even if logged in with an admin account already), then rebooting before the first use, can make things run more smoothly.

I decided to do just that. Got the 20770 installed and did a REPAIR.

Rebooted the PC and let it sit for 1/2 hour. Then opened TI2020, and it sat at the same point and I started my stopwatch. 17 seconds later TI opened. Closed TI and re-opened it. Same stop point on opening, started the stopwatch, and this time, 17 seconds later TI opened.

It is clear to me the first opening is now faster, but subsequent ones are still about the same. Not saying this isn't the way it is due to internal processing, just it is clearly longer to open overall compared to TI2016 that I had before.

Just encountered a situation where ATI 2020 #20770 took a very long time (minutes) to open whereas normally it would open very quickly.

Timing a normal start gave an average of 10-14 seconds for the ATI GUI to open.

The scenario that caused the very long start time was when I had inserted a 16GB SDHC card into my laptop card reader as part of recreating a completely separate backup scenario.  This extended to a backup of the SDHC card sitting on 'Calculating time remaining' for many minutes too, such that I ended up ejecting the SDHC card in order to cause the task to fail.

I wasn't able to recreate the long start up time after having completed a full backup & recovery of the SDHC card but it does seem suggest that ATI is doing some form of additional scans when new media is detected.

On my side, I have observed that ATI initialization is delayed if the NAS were the backups are stored is extremely busy. So along the lines of Steven's, it looks like ATI is scanning for disks and check the availability of backup destinations at launch.

It is possible that ATI 2020 is finding some older version script or database information from 2016 and running some the checks for disks and destinations used by the older version. To avoid this, uninstall ATI, reboot the computer and make sure that the Acronis folder in the hidden C:\programdata folder is deleted. Then reinstall ATI.

Steve, Pat L,

I have encountered the slow response of ATI as well.  I have tested this out and found the following is true for me.

1. After clean install of TI 2020 (previous version uninstalled via Revo Uninstaller including all registry entries) a first time startup may or may not succeed.  I will wait approximately 10 minutes and if the app does not start then I end the Acronis True Image 2020 (32 bit) process via task manager and relaunch the app.  In most cases this allows to the app to boot in under 5 minutes.
2. After first time startup the app will then launch in 10 to 15 seconds which I consider normal.
3. If I attach an external drive (any drive, usb, network, internal, flash, etc.) then app launch is slowed significantly while ATI scans the new device.  My latest was today when I attached a 2TB WD Ext. USB 3.0 drive.  I waited 15 minutes, opened Task Manager and after about a minute of watching the Acronis True Image 2020 process do nothing I selected that process and ended the task.  That immediately closed the launch window at which time I started ATI again and this time the app launched in approximately 13 seconds.
4. If a network location is unavailable, whether defined in ATI as a backup location or not, then ATI will suffer from this slow to never launch problem.  I have an NAS device that I had a permissions issue with for a long period of time and I could never get ATI to launch and that started back in the 2019 version!

I am still testing this slowness.  I just created a Survival Kit drive and I do not intend to have the drive attached to the PC except if and when I want to create backups to it.  I am anticipating that when I shut down ATI then, shutdown the PC and disconnect the drive then, startup the PC without the drive connected and then try to launch ATI the app will hang and not launch.  

I will report back my findings. 

Edit: Much to my surprise after creation of the Survival Kit drive, shutdown ATI, shutdown Windows, detach the Survival Kit drive, start Windows, then launch ATI the True Image app started in 13 seconds!  So getting this slow start to happen with consistency is still a problem, one which I have experienced since this slowness started in 2019. I have not clue as to what is at root cause.

Pat L wrote:

It is possible that ATI 2020 is finding some older version script or database information from 2016 and running some the checks for disks and destinations used by the older version. To avoid this, uninstall ATI, reboot the computer and make sure that the Acronis folder in the hidden C:\programdata folder is deleted. Then reinstall ATI.

I've had no changes to my (or my wife's) PC. But I do get different times from the opening stall at the middle of the bar as 'user' settings are applied. 

For instance, the PC's been on for 20 minutes, and the other day when I first opened TI is completed from that point in 17 seconds. Did the same test today, 28 seconds? What changed? I have no clue. I'm wondering if some sort of check (checksum) or even space used on every drive is checked? If not what it was before, some 'searching' is done? When it finds 'new' it checks that for problems?

Also, I did do the 'repair' and that didn't change much..

Speculation of using older version files would be an install bug, and should be easy to identify? In the Acronis folder there are some files dated from before install, but one can't tell what version they would apply to?

I looked for install logs, but there are so many logs dated the date I did install 2020 I don't know which one to look at? This one was interesting.

C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Logs>dir w*
 Volume in drive C is OS
 Volume Serial Number is EEE1-088E

 Directory of C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Logs

08/21/2019  04:01 PM             2,121 Wednesday__August_21__2019_3_52_40_PM.tib
.log
               1 File(s)          2,121 bytes

Had 2 lines that I took notice of:

    <event id="5" level="4" module="100" code="0" time="1566417686" message="Failed to process: 9B55D99C-D2EB-4DEC-83EC-A742857CB98F" >
    </event>
    <event id="6" level="4" module="100" code="0" time="1566417692" message="Failed to process: B56A297A-FB6D-4B22-B26A-83BD99144F2C" >

I couldn't find the what failed to process though?

Interesting, the REPAIR install didn't have those two line?

One question, deleting completely TI2020, wouldn't one lose track of the back up strategies (need to be rebuilt) and the present backups, and then the space would need to be managed manually (remove old ones as space needed)?

This is more a question for the developers in charge of the installer :-) Clearly, the installer can leverage data from prior versions since your can upgrade and not lose your prior set ups. Does the uninstaller eliminate all this data? Probably but it is easy to delete manually the Acronis program folder in the c:\programdata\ just ot make sure.

The references in what failed to be processed are the names of backup scripts. You can have a look at the corresponding files in

C:\programdata\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts

 Pat L wrote:

Clearly, the installer can leverage data from prior versions since your can upgrade and not lose your prior set ups.

True, but is it guaranteed to work from all versions of TI or just the prior one? Developer question for sure. Trying to get those answers via an open ticket, have not heard anything other than the initial answer yet?

Pat L wrote:

The references in what failed to be processed are the names of backup scripts. You can have a look at the corresponding files in

C:\programdata\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts

Those are my 2 backup scripts in the folder (only files there):

C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts>dir
 Volume in drive C is OS
 Volume Serial Number is EEE1-088E

 Directory of C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts

06/12/2019  04:14 PM    <DIR>          .
06/12/2019  04:14 PM    <DIR>          ..
09/07/2019  03:04 PM             4,505 14267A53-DF4E-4FCC-A637-D474537F212E.tib.tis
06/14/2019  02:00 PM             5,238 43B44D09-5328-42F4-ACD6-FAF9D2713290.tib.tis
               2 File(s)          9,743 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  31,103,791,104 bytes free

Top one is the full PC, bottom, C: only that I'll run manually occasionally.

Names did not match what was listed above. Couldn't find anything like that on my PC after V20770 install. I'd assume the Install would be basically the same? If so one would think the file would now be there?

I used Acronis TI for the first time yesterday having downloaded the lastest version from Acronis as bundled with a Western Digital purchase.  
I havent't got a fast PC but on first load Acronis opened fairly swiftly, the sort of time you'd expect for what is effectively a front end GUI to a utility program.
I added an incremental backup process to a local NAS and the first restore took several hours but given the volume of data and the fact that this was a one off task the time was acceptable.
Today I opened Acronis with the intention of cloning my main disk.  At the time of writing after about 10 minutes it is still opening.
So from this I infer
- performance of the GUI is not the issue
- the existence of a backup process is the trigger for the delay
- I don't think it's access to the NAS as (1) on first backup Acronis attached to the NAS share almost immediately (2) while waiting for Acronis to open I've attached to the NAS in File Explorer, again almost immediately, using the same credentials I set up for Acronis
So the existence of a backup process has caused Acronis to do a whole load of unnecessary work or something is causing an immense amount of idle time.

Now Windows is prompting that Acronis, still stuck on its splash page 'Applying User Settings' is not responding.  When I check Task Mansger there are background Acronis processes (why is there a Time Machine process on a Windows box?) but no Acronis App.

Someone from Acronis surely must know what's being done while the splash page shows 'Applying User Settings'.