ABR10 Workstation Build 11345's Bootable Media Builder generated media FAILS to boot

Any chance of Acronis support replying to my request for help??

Regards,

George

Hello George,

Thank you very much for your post. I am sorry for not replying earlier but I will definitely help you.

In cases when the regular bootable CD, which is based on Acrloader, does not work, we provide another one, which is based on ISOLINUX. I recommend taking a look at this article that explains the difference between them.

I will also send you a PM with a download link for a trial bootable CD based on ISOLINUX. Since it is a trial version, it is limited to restore operations only. Please let me know if this solution worked for you.

If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Good Day Anton,

Thank You for your Greatly Appreciated reply.

Please note: We own licences to Both ABR10 Workstation & ABR10 Advanced Workstation, so we should have access to full ISOLinux bootable ISOs (not just trial copies).

We need ABR10 Workstation Build 11345's Bootable Media Builder to work as it is meant to, as we use it to generate bootable CD/DVDs & usb memory sticks to do backups & restores....

Please note that 11105's Bootable Media Builder worked correctly.

So is this problem a known problem with 11345?

And is there a fix?

Thank You,

Best Regards,

George

.
PS:
I have not received any PM from You.

Hello George,

Thank you for getting back to me. I am sorry I was not able to send you a PM, you had that option turned off in your forum account.

I understand that you need the bootable media created with the software, I will check this issue with our experts and get back to you.

At the moment, we are not aware of any such issues. There is no fix at the moment, however I can suggest a workaround. Using our ISOLINUX media you can create a bootable usb memory stick. We have several ways to do this. They are all explained in detail in this KB article.

You can download the Acronis bootable media from your Acronis web-account.

Thank you.

Hello Anton,

Thank You for your Greatly Appreciated reply.
.

Anton wrote:

Thank you for getting back to me. I am sorry I was not able to send you a PM, you had that option turned off in your forum account.

I thought I had allowed PMs, But I have now corrected my mistake & PMs are on....

.

Anton wrote:

I understand that you need the bootable media created with the software, I will check this issue with our experts and get back to you.

At the moment, we are not aware of any such issues. There is no fix at the moment, however I can suggest a workaround. Using our ISOLINUX media you can create a bootable usb memory stick. We have several ways to do this. They are all explained in detail in this KB article.

You can download the Acronis bootable media from your Acronis web-account.

Thank You for checking re the issue we are having with  ABR10 Workstation Build 11345's Bootable Media Builder.

We Greatly Appreciate your response, as we have been "messed around" by your email support people, as Unfortunately we Never get a straight honest answer to our queries, questions & requests from them....

.
Thank You Very Much,

Best Regards,
George

Anton wrote:

At the moment, we are not aware of any such issues

. 

You have to be kidding, right? If the statement above is true then I'd have to question just who, if anyone, at Acronis is bothering to use the product themselves; and certainly no one has done any extensive degree of real-world pre-release beta testing (appearing instead to prefer a business model of springing thoroughly untested software upon unwitting, paying retail customers).

Hello all,

I appreciate you posting here.

George, you are very welcome and I am happy to assist you.

After checking with our Expert team, it looks like the issue is related to the Media Builder components not updating properly.

I would recommend updating the media builder components manually. Please replace the following files with the ones that I shall provide you with:

\Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\BacupAndRecoveryAgent\kernel.dat

\Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\BackupAndRecoveryAgent\agent_ramdisk.dat

I will send you a PM with a download link from which you can download those components. After that, please create another bootable media and let me know how it works.

bboyer,

Thank you very much for your feedback, it is very important to us. I was referring to the specific issue that George was having using build 11345 and getting error messages. It seems this is related to the media builder not updating properly. However, if you have any issues with our bootable CDs, please submit a support request and we will be more than happy to assist you.

Thank you gentlemen and let me know if you have any other questions.

Good Day Anton,

I have downloaded the 2 files, & will try the fix later today.
I will let You know the outcome.

Thank You Very Much for your Greatly Appreciated assistance,

Best Regards,
George

Anton wrote:

bboyer,

Thank you very much for your feedback, it is very important to us. I was referring to the specific issue that George was having using build 11345 and getting error messages. It seems this is related to the media builder not updating properly. However, if you have any issues with our bootable CDs, please submit a support request and we will be more than happy to assist you.

Thank you gentlemen and let me know if you have any other questions.

As was I, Anton (i.e. referring to the OP's specific issue with build 11345 media builder not working and the error messages involved). I got the same message trying to create a bootable cd using media builder. Now I am only getting the first part about not being able to create the ramdisk, press any key to continue; when I press any key to continue I don't get the bit about kernel panic mode etc, all I get is a black screen and unresponsive system requiring a reboot.

Perhaps you could be so kind as to PM me the kernel.dat and agent_ramdisk.dat files to try out as well. I extracted the kernel.dat and ramdisk.dat files from the downloadable ISO file and copied them to the Acronis media builder directory and renamed ramdisk.dat to agent_ramdisk.dat, but that obviously didn't work either.

Good Day Anton,

Have done as per your instructions...
..But unfortunately getting the same as originally:

(1). Bootable CD - when try to boot using it get:
"Starting Acronis Loder" => ABR10 selected =>
"Unable ro load initial ramdisk. Press <Enter> to proceed"
=> <Enter>
=> "Loading, please wait..."
"Kernel panic - not syncing : VFS : Unable to mount root fs on unknown - block(1,0)"
And it locks up....

(2). Bootable usb memory stick - when try to boot using it get:
"Non - system disk"
"MBR Error 1"

.
What can be done next?

.
Best Regards,
George

Hello all,

Thank you for getting back to me.

bboyer,

I am very sorry for the inconvenience. You have extracted the correct files from the ISOLINUX CD, this is what I sent to George.

I will be discussing this issue with our Expert team and if you do not mind, I will update you very soon, either with a solution or possibly a request for diagnostic information. Once again, I apologize for the trouble.

George,

I have sent you a PM and as I mentioned to bboyer, I will get back to you as soon as possible with information from our Expert team.

If you have any other questions, gentlemen, please let me know.

Anton wrote:

Hello all,

Thank you for getting back to me.

bboyer,

I am very sorry for the inconvenience. You have extracted the correct files from the ISOLINUX CD, this is what I sent to George.

I will be discussing this issue with our Expert team and if you do not mind, I will update you very soon, either with a solution or possibly a request for diagnostic information. Once again, I apologize for the trouble.

Thank you, Anton. Despite numerous prior bugs with ABR10, I have managed to resolve all of them except for this last remaining issue. Any assistance is appreciated.

In my case, the downloadable ISO file does boot okay but it does not include the Universal Restore feature/section when I burn the ISO file to CD and select the Restore from Disk or Volume function when booted, even though the download on the My Account page is labeled Universal Restore Upgrade (there is also a separate download for just the regular ABR 10 Workstation ISO download without U.R.). So I had hoped that since U.R. is installed and does show up within the Windows booted version of my ABR 10 Workstation that the boot media created from the Windows GUI ABR10 Media Builder would do the trick for me.

Can't test this out since the CD that Media Builder creates doesn't actually boot up but just hangs after the ramdisk creation failure and error + "press any key..." message.

(Lenovo Thinkpad T400 Intel T9600 proc. 4 gb ram, 2gb Intel Turbo Memory)

Anton wrote:

George,

I have sent you a PM and as I mentioned to bboyer, I will get back to you as soon as possible with information from our Expert team.

If you have any other questions, gentlemen, please let me know.

Good Day Anton,

You have a PM.

Thank You Very Much for your assistance,

Best Regards,

George

Hello all,

Thank you very much for your patience in this. I discussed this issue with our Expert team and I was told, that there can be an issue with the actual process of the bootable CD creation. If you do not mind, I would like to request some diagnostic information from you, so that our Expert team can take a look and resolve this.

bboyer,

For troubleshooting purposes, I downloaded the exact same bootable media that you have under your Acronis Web-account, created a full backup of my virtual OS. After that, I started the restore wizard and the Acronis Universal Restore option was there. There could be a few reasons why you are not prompted with the AUR option, for example, AUR does not detect your operating system. We have an extensive troubleshooting guide for this, do you mind checking it from this link? I will also generate a unique link for the same bootable media and maybe you could give it a try?

I will create a case for you and send you an e-mail because the other issue requires some personal information to be sent over together with instructions for those troubleshooting logs.

George,

If you do not mind, I will also create a case for you and send you an e-mail with the same instructions so that our Expert team can resolve this issue.

Thank you very much for your time and please let me know if you have additional questions.

Anton wrote:

Hello all,

Thank you very much for your patience in this. I discussed this issue with our Expert team and I was told, that there can be an issue with the actual process of the bootable CD creation. If you do not mind, I would like to request some diagnostic information from you, so that our Expert team can take a look and resolve this.

bboyer,

For troubleshooting purposes, I downloaded the exact same bootable media that you have under your Acronis Web-account, created a full backup of my virtual OS. After that, I started the restore wizard and the Acronis Universal Restore option was there. There could be a few reasons why you are not prompted with the AUR option, for example, AUR does not detect your operating system. We have an extensive troubleshooting guide for this, do you mind checking it from this link? I will also generate a unique link for the same bootable media and maybe you could give it a try?

I will create a case for you and send you an e-mail because the other issue requires some personal information to be sent over together with instructions for those troubleshooting logs.

Thanks, Anton. See my email reply to you with the requested data. As mentioned in the email I did try the bootable media from the link you provided and get the same result as with the ISO downloaded from my account page, i.e. no AUR option with the Restore disk/volume partition function. The article you refer to doesn't really apply to Windows 7 since it no longer uses a "boot.ini" file, using bcdedit instead. Examining that I found no reference to the scsi or multi partitions. As far as the other points of the articles, what I backed up was my main Windows 7 64-bit system partition (Drive C).

Ok, now this is strange. Using ABR10 from within Windows, the Recover function, I just selected various other backups starting with one of my older ones of a previous Vista Ultimate 32-bit system partition; the AUR option showed up. I then tried others and it also showed up for them as well, with the exception of the most recent system backup I did several days ago; it is apparently only this one backup that is not giving me the AUR option.

I'm going to re-do this backup task as a completely new task and try this again both from within Windows and using a boot CD to see if AUR shows up. Will report back shortly.

EDIT: Ok, from within Windows I just created and ran a new backup task for my current Windows 7 64-bit system partition (Drive C:). Then went to Recover it and, sure enough, the AUR option is not there. But if I select one of the older partition backups I do get the AUR option. Only thing is, I don't recall which version of ABR10 Standalone Workstation created the other, older archives but I believe it was the version just prior to 11345, i.e. 11133.

There have been no major changes to my system, mostly just the updates from Microsoft. So I'm assuming at this point that something was changed between versions 11133 and 11345 that is affecting the AUR option on new archives created under 11345 but not those created under 11133 (even if later updated under 11345, which I know has been the case with one or more of my existing archives)?

EDIT 2: Anton, for my part, you can disregard any further; I've located the problem as far as seeing/not-seeing the AUR option. On these Lenovo systems, at least on the T400 laptops, the 2-3gb hidden partition called "system_drv" must be selected, at least as part of the initial full backup, in order to be able to have the AUR option show up under the later Recovery function for that disk/volume partition. This system_drv partition is a separate partition from the normal Windows partition (e.g. Drive C:). For any Lenovo users out there, I did not have to back up the Lenovo Recovery parition (Drive Q:), just the hidden "system_drv" and the main Windows (Drive C:) partitions.

My apologies for my earlier irateness targetted at the Acronis product. My problem appears to have stemmed from the peculiarities of my particular system, not with the Acronis product. No company can be expected to account for every iteration of hardware and software specs "out there."

And many thanks to Anton for his professionalism and patience.

EDIT 3: Re the bootable media not booting; I had forgotten that I had installed Acronis Disk Director 10 a few months back, not a good idea for Windows 7, particularly since DD10 also includes a Boot Media Builder section in its installation. So I decided to completely uninstall all things Acronis and reinstall from scratch without DD10. This worked, and the resulting bootable media created from within Windows ABR10 is booting correctly now, including the AUR option (see EDIT 2 above).

Anton wrote:

Hello all,

Thank you very much for your patience in this. I discussed this issue with our Expert team and I was told, that there can be an issue with the actual process of the bootable CD creation. If you do not mind, I would like to request some diagnostic information from you, so that our Expert team can take a look and resolve this.

.....

..........

...................

George,

If you do not mind, I will also create a case for you and send you an e-mail with the same instructions so that our Expert team can resolve this issue.

....
..........

Good Day Anton,

I have replied to your eMail & PM (& supplied required info).

Best Regards,

George

Hello all,

Thank you very much for getting back to me.

bboyer,

I am very happy that the two issues with our software were resolved and you are very welcome. I will contact our Knowledge Base team so that they can update the article that I gave you - 1823: Acronis Product Does Not Prompt to Use Acronis Universal Restore. We have a number of Lenovo users that could benefit from this, as well as to ask them to update information for Windows 7.

George,

I got your PM and your e-mail with the logs, thank you very much for that. After studying the process monitor logs, just like in bboyer's case, there were some traces of Disk Director left over. We can first try editing the registry and repairing the installation. If this does not fix this problem we will have to use our Acronis Clean-up utility or perform a manual uninstallation of ABR10, so that we get rid of all Acronis software traces. After that, I am confident, a fresh installation of ABR10 will fix this. I have sent you an e-mail with all the instructions.

If you have any other questions, bboyer and George, please let me know.

Thank you very much for your time.

Anton wrote:

George,

I got your PM and your e-mail with the logs, thank you very much for that. After studying the process monitor logs, just like in bboyer's case, there were some traces of Disk Director left over. We can first try editing the registry and repairing the installation. If this does not fix this problem we will have to use our Acronis Clean-up utility or perform a manual uninstallation of ABR10, so that we get rid of all Acronis software traces. After that, I am confident, a fresh installation of ABR10 will fix this. I have sent you an e-mail with all the instructions.

If you have any other questions, bboyer and George, please let me know.

Good Day Anton,

You have eMail.

I should point out that currently installed are:
ABR10 Workstation 11345, Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0.2160, & Acronis Drive Cleanser 6.0.691
Where ABR10 Workstation 11345 was installed after we uninstalled Acronis TI Echo Workstation 9.5.0.8206

Would installing the current release of Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0.2239 fix this conflict?
Why is this conflict occurring?

If we uninstall all the Acronis applications & then re-install them, in which particular order should we do the installations?

Please advise.

Thank You Very Much,

Best Regards,
George

Dear all,

unfrtunately I've the same behaviour...
ATI 2010 Home
ABR 2010 Server build 11345 with UR
Using Acronis Rescue disk it stop respondig after showing :
Unable to load initial Ramdisk... "

I've already tried, following your suggestions, the ISOLINUX image instead of the Acronis Loader, but again got another error:
bin/ipwatchd/ error while loading shared libraries libpcap.so.0.8 cannot open shared object file, no such file or directory.

Obviously I'm alittle bit worried about that situation, I've tried on several different hardware but got everytime the same result.

Please let me know how to proceed

Thanks and regards

GioB

Hello GioB,

Thank you for posting and I will definitely help you with this.

As I mentioned above, the error message "Unable to load initial Ramdisk" is caused by the Acronis media builder not working correctly. Can you kindly let me know, if you have other versions of Acronis products installed on the same machine, and did you install build 11345 over a previous build?

If I understood correctly, the following error : "bin/ipwatchd/ error while loading shared libraries libpcap.so.0.8 cannot open shared object file, no such file or directory." appears when you try to boot from the ISOLINUX version of Acronis True Image 2010 Home. I would like to assure you that this message can be safely ignored, I have checked this with our Linux expert and he told me this is nothing to worry about because the bootable CD still boots into the Acronis bootable CD interface.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thank you.

RE: Re: [Case 00522573] Bootable CD issue [ ref:00D3Zcb.50058JCOq:ref ]

Good Day Anton,

Could You Please help?

I have Not heard anything from Acronis Support for more than 4 weeks (since You escalated our issue)....
..& have Not had any response to my emails sent on the 12 & 18th August, 2010 requesting a status update.

Could You Please help, as we have NOT seen ANY progress whatsoever, since our case got escalated.
Please email me at my usual address

Best Regards,
George

 Hello George!

Thank you for reporting about the procrastination with the reply! I'm very sorry for you've faced this inconvenience and be sure I will do my best to speed up the process. 

I have carefully checked the case and the information related to it: currently our Tester's team is reproducing the problem. I have forwarded a speed up request to the Experts team, so you should have the latest news today. You case will also be taken care of, and you will be updated with the latest news.

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused and for the procrastination with the reply, be sure we will do our best to avoid it in future. 

In case you won't receive a reply today - please, let us know, we will immediately escalate the case to the Management level and make sure your request is handled in a proper way. 

Thank you!

Good Day Yana,

Thank You Very Much for your reply, & Greatly Appreciated assistance.

I have sent You a board message.

Best Regards,
George

I just downloaded the trial Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Workstation 10.0.11639 and have the same "ramdisk" issue booting from a CD - need your help.

Best regards Andreas

 Dear George!

Thank you for keeping me notified and posted. I'm really sorry for the inconvenience you're going through. Please be sure you have my empathy regarding this situation and I will do my best to help you. 

I've contacted Experts, Testers and Development team. Unfortunately there's not much we can tell, but we're continue working on speeding up the resolution process. From the history of the case I can see that you've been provided with a temporary solution - custom bootable medias, which are reported in our cases to be working. Could you please let me know whether everything is fine with this workaround and it's working? This is very important for us. 

I've sent you more detailed reply via Private message...

Dear Andreas!

I will be glad to help you. I'll send you a custom ISO via Private message in a minute. Please, in case it doesn't work, provide me with the Acronis Linux Report from the media - it will show us what exactly doesn't work and allow us to build a custom media suitable for your environment. 

Should you have any additional questions or concerns - let me know, I will be glad to address them!

Good Day Yana,

Thank You Very Much for Your Greatly Appreciated reply.

I have sent You a Board message (PM).

Best Regards,
George

Anton I have the same problem.

My Acronis Media Builder say the error: UNABLE TO LOAD INITIAL RAMDISK.

Can you send me the following files to solve the problem?
kernel.dat
agent_ramdisk.dat

Thank you !!!

Hello Carlos!

Welcome to our Forum, we're glad to greet you here!

Have you tried recreating the bootable media with the help of the latest updated ISO from your account? The ISO can be burnt onto the CD with the help of the free software mentioned in this KB article.

If you have already tried this solution, and the issue remains, please gather Acronis Linux Report from the media, and submit a case with the information attached, and let us know it's number.

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!

Does Acronis listen to any of it's Customers - Why do you still post faulty updates. I've downloaded the latest update rebuilt the server and still I get the same problems with building media. I hope the other companies start competeing with Acronis and create a decent imaging software like Acronis, so that maybe we can move to that as Acronis Customer service is so bad I don't even bother contacting them anymore.

Was there ever a viable solution to this problem. We are evaluating the Backup & Recovery 10 Workstation. Having bootable rescue media is important.

Hello all,

Thank you for posting. I will definitely help you.

Eugene, I apologize for the difficulties you had with the bootable media. I would recommend to contact our Support team so that we can fix this issue for you.

Gary, which Acronis program are you using? Are you getting this error message - unable to load initial ramdisk?

Please let me your version so that I can send you a downloadable version of the bootable media. Sometimes when it is created within the product and if some program components are not updated properly such issues could arise.

In case you need immediate assistance you can always get in touch with our Support team. We offer technical support for the duration of the trial period.

If you have additional questions, please let me know.

Thank you.

Hello Anton,

We are testing Acronis Backup & Recovery Workstation 10. And yes. we are plagued with the error "unable to load initial ramdisk" when trying to boot from the boot disc.

Thanks,

Gary

Hi Gary,

Thank you for replying. We can try this workaround.

I will send you a private message with a download link for the trial version of the bootable media. Please check how it works and if fails to boot, please contact our Support team, I am certain that we can resolve this issue.

Please let me know if you require additional help.

Thank you.

Nonsense...!!! Sheer and utter nonsense...!!!

Your products have not worked consistently in 10 years...!!!

HOW DARE YOU LIE ON MY TIME AND MONEY, AND SAY YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF THIS BEFORE...!!!

Your products ONLY work on a "Hard Coded" and "Best Case" scenario...!!!

Your company gives NOTHING but brush off responses, handed out by "Newbie Phone Jockeys"...

All you do is read from a "Vantive Database", and "Canned Answer" everybody after you've walked around all of the "Cubicles" in your department with your "Headset" dangling from your shoulders...

I want you all to understand this PERFECTLY CLEAR, that I am SOOooo reticulated into "Web", that WHATEVER I POST FROM MY SITES IS IMMORTAL...!!!

I want you doubt me...!!!

Your company has EXACTLY 24 HOURS to SOLVE this 10 YEAR OLD DEFICIENCY, or I am going to turn EVERY PRODUCT YOU HAVE EVER MADE INTO A TORRENT AND GIVE IT AWAY FOR FREE...!!!

Now, MY pseudonyms are LEGEND...!!!

If you delete my posting, then you've cut your time in half and have 12-Hours...!!!

Gentlemen, the clock is ticking...

YOU WILL RELEASE A SOLVED PUBLIC REVISION TO EVERY ONE OF YOUR PRODUCTS AND WILL MAKE A FORMAL APOLOGY TO EVERY ONE OF YOUR CUSTOMERS EVER WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS, OR YOU WILL NEVER SELL ANOTHER PRODUCT AGAIN...

You wanna "play" me like "Fight Club"...?!? I OWN THE INTERNET...!!!

"kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(1,0)"

I dare you to doubt me... I "Double Dog Dare" you...

Hello Paperless Network Solutions,

Thank you for posting and welcome to the Acronis forum. I will definitely help you with this issue.

Kernel panic error messages usually indicate that the bootable media is corrupt. There are several ways to resolve it, please check the following KB article - Acronis Bootable Media Fails to Load with "Kernel panic".

If the article does not help I would recommend to contact our Support team with this report.

In case you have an existing support call with us I would really appreciate if you could get back to me with its number in case you need additional assistance, because I could not find any cases or products registered to your Acronis web-account.

Please note that according to Acronis licensing policy it is illegal to share our software.

Thank you very much for your feedback and I will add it to our Customer Listening System tracker. If you would like to contact our Management team please send an e-mail to managers@acronis.com or get in touch with me so that I can arrange it.

If you have additional questions or any other issues, please let me know.

Thank you.

I was also running into this problem in the past... I've lost count on what I had to do to make it work. I, too, get to work for free when using your products. Seriously, test your products before making us guenia pigs.