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Windows 11 boot repair

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As has been mentioned on this forum in the past, Macrium Reflect has a boot repair option in the boot media.

 

I read in the Acronis manual that Universal restore has the same option, that on a failed Acronis (regular) restore if it fails to boot you could use the Universal restore boot media to repair boot.

 

Guess what, I saw no option when I booted it to repair boot?  Can someone tell me how (with Acronis) to repair boot.

Yes I can do a:

bcdboot C:\windows /s G: /f UEFI

But surely Acronis has a boot repair doesn't it?

 

 

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I read in the Acronis manual that Universal restore has the same option, that on a failed Acronis (regular) restore if it fails to boot you could use the Universal restore boot media to repair boot.

Sorry but I cannot find any such mention of any equivalent to the boot repair option offered by Macrium Reflect in the Acronis documentation nor in the Universal Restore utility.

The main method that Acronis offers in this area would be to restore such as an EFI System partition from a known good backup image etc.

An older version: https://kb.acronis.com/content/21327  But why wouldn't they have boot repair in a newer version as well?

That article says:

It is also possible to use Acronis Universal Restore to restore system bootability without performing an actual restoration.

The KB document is referencing one of the Acronis premium business products Backup 11.5 where it is providing enhanced capabilities in that environment that are not present in the Home Office products hence the options shown in that document that do not exist in AUR for True Image or ACPHO.

@Steve Smith    

You are an MVP, can you actually believe that Acronis doesn't have such a basic thing included like Macrium does to repair boot?

When I tested one restore to a different size drive with acronis, restoring one partition at a time, I got a no boot situation.  Of course I know how to repair boot using Bcdboot. But the average user would be lost.

 

Heck, in Macrium you can just drag the partitions to new drive.  Remember the only partition that should change size is the Windows partition, others should remain the size they are already.

To me a boot repair is something that should be in Acronis (any version).

You being an MVP, ask yourself. "Why in the World wouldn't Acronis include basic boot repair".

I can also tell you that the Microsoft repair option from their rescue disk fails probably 75 percent of the time.  Why, I don't know. You would think it would fix boot at least 99 percent of the time.

But just some observations.  How do you do a boot repair if needed?

 

 

You are an MVP, can you actually believe that Acronis doesn't have such a basic thing included like Macrium does to repair boot?

Yes, I can believe this as it is also true of other vendors of Backup & Recovery software that I have used with the sole exception of Macrium Reflect (which I also use).

I agree that Acronis should have such a boot repair feature, as demonstrated by their offering this in their business application product, but this joins the list of other features that Acronis should have such as an integrated log viewer tool (instead of relying on the MVP community to provide one!), and another option that MR has to add a Boot menu option for a rescue .WIM file using WinRE media instead of their antiquated ASRM which is Linux based.

But just some observations.  How do you do a boot repair if needed?

Fortunately, I have very rarely needed to do any boot repair as doing a full disk recovery from a recent full disk backup image has normally been sufficient.

In terms of what I would do if a recovery failed, then as mentioned above I have an option to use my MR boot media, or else use MiniTool Partition Wizard, or other tools. 

I agree about the failure rate of the Windows Startup Repair / Automatic Repair tool - I have experienced that for myself in a recent fight with a failing Windows 10 PC where the actual root issue was a failing motherboard causing an intermittent boot failure or system freeze or BSOD.  In that case I found that I could get further by booting into Safe Mode but this was after replacing all other hardware in that PC and still seeing the same issue (PSU, Memory, HDD, cables...).

The bottom line here is that not all applications are equal.  Acronis should be a market leader and best of breed but they appear to have fallen back in the experience for Home / Small Office users with their non-business products.  This is partially because of their determination to try to move these applications into the Cyber Protection / Security arena along with abandoning their perpetual license users in favour of a subscription only revenue model.

@Steve Smith    

Try Terabyte Unlimited Image for Windows it is pretty darn good.  You are probably familiar with it already.

But I also use Macrium Reflect.