TrueImage 2013 Locks Up Windows 8 Pro When Trying to Backup a System Drive (C:) backed by VHD

Ron,

My W8 install is a VHD within a W7 physical machine. Making an image of the booted VHD shouldn't be a problem, though your setup is different to mine as I assume you use the W8 boot manager as the physical machine to VHD boot.

How is your Z drive connected to your PC?

I have a 240GB SSD which is formatted as a standard NTFS file system. On it is only one file which is a 220GB VHD which is the Windows 8 OS. Whenever I try to backup the C:\ drive which is backed by the VHD, Acronis gets to the point as in the attached image and then the whole machine hangs although, I still get mouse interrupts.

Unfortunately Ron, that log file looks fine and as it doesn't show were it fails it is all a bit of a puzzle.

Check in Windows Event Manager and see if there are any errors or warnings relating to True Image listed.

If you try an image one of your physical disks does this work?

Is your drive Z internal, external, NAS?

Have you tried running a repair install of 2013?

Try imaging the VHD as a partition rather than as a disk and see if you get any further. I am trying to mull over in my mind how a complete virtual W8 is different to my virtual W8, as I know I can also boot mine using the W8 boot manager as well s the W7 one.

There are no events associated with Acronis or anything else around the time of the backup.

The system appears to completely hang after the startup sequence I attached in the original message.

The Z:\ drive is connected though eSata and works fine for all the other partition backups.

I just tried backing up c:\ as a partition. When I started the backup, right after it goes into 'calculating', the system starts to lockup. And after about 1 minute, the system becomes completely unresponsive.

Maybe, the right answer it to just do a file backup the L:\Windows8Fixed.vhd file which is what I am trying now. Same problem - system is locking up as I type this...

Thanks for all of your suggestions and help...

ok - just got an error back from trying to backup the vhd file - attached....

It fails after 7 minutes. During that time, I get errors in the eventlog like:

SearchIndexer (6652) Windows: A request to write to the file "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Windows.edb" at offset 608600064 (0x0000000024468000) for 32768 (0x00008000) bytes succeeded, but took an abnormally long time (37 seconds) to be serviced by the OS. In addition, 8 other I/O requests to this file have also taken an abnormally long time to be serviced since the last message regarding this problem was posted 12 seconds ago. This problem is likely due to faulty hardware. Please contact your hardware vendor for further assistance diagnosing the problem.

I assume the backup is using VSS which may be slowing down access.. Just guessing??

Hmm, the corporate versions uses VSS 9which can be switched off or use different VSS servers), I'm not sure if the Home versions do as well.

Could you provide a screen shot of what Windows Disk Manager shows while you are booted please? The reason I ask, is that looking at the TI log, TI seems not to see your running VHD as C:\ which it should, it is showing it as L:\ which is unusual.

Is L: a mounted VHD as in being able to explore the VHD as just another drive or is this the booted VHD and therefore behaving like a running OS?

What you can't do is image a running VHD (that is it is running as the OS) actual VHD file.

For example on my system I have Windows 7 installed, within that system i have a folder called VHD, inside that folder are my four VHD based OS' . I can image the VHD files if I am in Windows 7 and making a complete disk image. If I am running as an OS the W8 VHD (by booting into W8 from the boot manager) I can image W8 and I can image all of W7 apart from the actual W8 VHD file in the VHD folder as it is running.

The L:\drive is mounted but does not need to be. It is hosting the vhd which is what the system is booting from as per the BCD below. I have also included a snapshot of the Disk manager. As you can see Disk 6 is the Microsoft Virtual Disk which is based on Disk 2 SSD L:\windows8

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume4
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-us
inherit {7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e}
integrityservices Enable
default {56089da6-4d10-11e2-be9c-00248c947e91}
resumeobject {56089da5-4d10-11e2-be9c-00248c947e91}
displayorder {56089da6-4d10-11e2-be9c-00248c947e91}
{4dcb6ee7-32a9-11e2-a5d4-00248c947e91}
{4dcb6ee3-32a9-11e2-a5d4-00248c947e91}
{1d14578c-f1a4-11de-81ca-eb4401c35a84}
toolsdisplayorder {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout 5

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {56089da6-4d10-11e2-be9c-00248c947e91}
device vhd=[L:]\Windows8Fixed.vhd,locate=custom:12000002
path \windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 8
locale en-us
inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
integrityservices Enable
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice vhd=[L:]\Windows8Fixed.vhd,locate=custom:22000002
systemroot \windows
resumeobject {56089da5-4d10-11e2-be9c-00248c947e91}
nx OptIn
bootmenupolicy Standard
hypervisorlaunchtype Auto
detecthal Yes

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {4dcb6ee7-32a9-11e2-a5d4-00248c947e91}
device vhd=[L:]\Windows8Boot.vhd,locate=custom:12000002
path \wINDOWS\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 8
locale en-us
inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice vhd=[L:]\Windows8Boot.vhd,locate=custom:22000002
systemroot \wINDOWS
resumeobject {4dcb6ee6-32a9-11e2-a5d4-00248c947e91}
nx OptIn
bootmenupolicy Standard
detecthal Yes

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {4dcb6ee3-32a9-11e2-a5d4-00248c947e91}
device vhd=[\Device\HarddiskVolume6]\Windows8Boot.vhd,locate=custom:12000002
path \windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 8
locale en-US
inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
recoverysequence {4dcb6ee4-32a9-11e2-a5d4-00248c947e91}
integrityservices Enable
recoveryenabled Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice vhd=[\Device\HarddiskVolume6]\Windows8Boot.vhd,locate=custom:22000002
systemroot \windows
resumeobject {4dcb6ee2-32a9-11e2-a5d4-00248c947e91}
nx OptIn
bootmenupolicy Standard
hypervisorlaunchtype Auto

Any help here would be greatly appreciated. I feel like I'm running without a parachute right now....

Have you tried just making an image of the VHD?

Are you running this on a RAID system?

No RAID - just plain old disks.

I can't believe no one else is experiencing this problem. The system grind to a halt and then stops responding over about a 1 - 2 minute period of time whenever I try to back the C:\ partition backed by the vhd.