Skip to main content

Warning: ABR 11.5 Agent for Windows + PGP Whole Disk Encryption = unbootable system

Thread needs solution

I upgraded to ABR Advanced Workstation 11.5 last week, and upgraded agents (Core, Windows agent, Deduplication and Universal Restore) on three workstations. All three had been running fine with v11 build 17437 and all three had boot drives encrypted with PGP v 10.x.

All three installed remotely without issues. Two appeared with the updated client version in the Management console, one did not. I rebooted this machine and discovered that it would no longer boot (blue screen, could not see the output and no log entry was written, but if I had to guess it was probably INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE). This was a x64 Windows XP system.

After decrypting the drive, the machine boots fine, so it is definitely an interaction with PGP WDE.

A second of the three machines had the same problem when I rebooted it - I am in the process of decrypting this one now. This machine was running x64 Windows 7 Enterprise.

I uninstalled the 11.5 agent on the third machine, I cannot reboot it until later on, bt hopefuly it will not need to be decrypted also.

Acronis: What has changed from v 11 agent to v 11.5 which would cause this interaction? I can't upgrade any more agents until this is resolved.

0 Users found this helpful

Hello Jay,

Thank you for your posting on the forum. I will be more than happy to assist you.

It appears that during the upgrade something went wrong with setting proper keys in the registry.
Please try the following, and let me know the results:

1. Choose any machine where you didn't proceed with an upgrade yet.
2. Uninstall ABR 11 from that machine.
3. Reboot.
4. Make sure that PGP WDE is working with no issues.
5. Install ABR 11.5.
6. Check whether the issue is still the same.

Also please let me know how did the reboot of third machine went.

Yours truly,

Hi Bagaudin,
I am doing some testing on this today - first I am trying to do PGP WDE after installing the 11.5 agent on an unencrypted machine.

I'll try your test next and report results of both tests.

Thanks,
JDC