Backup failed at crucial time - missing dll files?

Hi,

I've browsed the forums and seen similar issues but none totally specific to my problem, so here goes:

After a complete system rebuild (Win 7 Home Premium x64) I installed True Image Home 2010, but 3 dll files failed to load. The Installer gave me the option to skip these, which I did. The Installer then told me that the Install was successful. Fearing another crash, I tried to create the startup recovery manager, but this was unsuccessful.

I now know that this was because the Acronis/Windows 7 integration failed. Was it something to do with those 3 dll files?

I have since upgraded to True Image Home 2011, but that install ALSO failed to register the dll files, and also failed to create the recovery manager. (I ran the installs as administrator AND checked the 'Run as Admin' box in Properties->Compatibility AND and gave full user rights to the install programs just to be sure. I did the same to all the exe files I could find in the Acronis directory as well.)

I do not use Acronis Secure Zone, instead putting my Partition backup and NonStop backups on the 2nd internal drive of my laptop.

Anyway, the inevitable happened, and my system crashed again. First step was to use WIndows System Restore, but that failed as a specific file could not be located (though WIndows wouldn't tell me which one.) I tried again using 3 other restore points, but still no joy. No problem, I'll just start TIH from Windows Safe Mode and do a Windows partition restore.........

Except this didn't work. :(

TIH started, and I pointed it to the drive which had the backup on it. I selected to restore the whole partition, clicked 'Restore Now' but NOTHING HAPPENED. No dialog box, no hard disk activity, not even any signs of life on TaskManager (no disk reads/writes, increase in memory allocation, I/O requests, etc.) Just nothing.

I then tried to restore just the c:/Windows directory using the files and folders option, figuring that Windows would at least start in normal mode if it had the right files in Sys32, etc. TIH took a long time but finally calculated the size of the files to be restored. This I took as a good sign. I selected the version, and hit 'Restore Now.' TIH opened the backup OK, but all I got was a dialog box saying 'there is no operation to perform' (or something similar to that) and all I could do was hit the OK button and go back to square one. I tried 'restore now' from the right click menu of Windows Explorer, but that also failed to work.

In the end, I converted the partition backup to a Windows Backup, re-booted, ran Windows Backup and restored from there. That worked!!

Luckily, I keep all my data on my laptop's 2nd drive, so I now have a fully working system again. But I'm a bit miffed that I paid 60-odd pounds for TIH plus 30-odd pounds for the upgrade to TIH 2011, only to find that it didn't work when I needed it!!

I appreciate that (at least one of) the problems are caused by the lack of Windows 7 integration, which I think has something to do with the failure to register those 3 dll files. But This was on a vanilla system, with no firewall, virus/malware suite or anything similar running (obviously I have since installed adequate protection.) Why did the dlls fail to register on a vanilla install? One of the forum posts said something about rebuilding the MBR, but this seems a bit scary to me!

Please could somebody tell me how to get the dll files to register properly, and hopefully this will give me a working version of TIH. Any other suggestions and advice would, of course, be appreciated.

NB I work on a cruise ship and our internet access is slow and expensive, with very small satellite bandwidth allocation and erratic packet transfer (we call it 'thin-band'). So please accept my apologies if this has in fact been asked/answered elsewhere - I just don't have the money to be able to spend hours browsing forums.

INCIDENTALLY.........

I created a full version TIH bootable media on a USB flash drive that I have permanently attached to my laptop (it's the incredibly tiny Buffalo RUF2-PS 8GB, which protrudes about 2cm from the side of my laptop so doesn't get in the way when I'm carting my laptop ashore trying to find a good Wi-Fi signal. They're only £16 off eBay.......amazing!!) I'm hoping that if I have a full 'can't-even-boot-up' crash that I will be able to boot into TIH from there. However, I'm also using this as ReadyBoost memory for Windows 7. Would it be better to partition the flashdrive, as ReadyBoost only wants 4GB and I have 8? Would my BIOS see the USB flash partition and boot from there (American Megatrends, update May 2010)? Or Would it be better to re-partition my 2nd internal drive and put the bootable media on there?