No hard disks found - solved

This post is to document an issue I encountered with both True Image 2015 & 2016 where the System Recovery Manager (F11 on boot) and locally created Linux & WinPE recovery media could not find any installed hard drive or partitions.

The system was a Dell Studio 1537 laptop with a 1TB Hybrid SSD drive, dual-boot with both Windows Vista (32-bit) and Windows 10 (64-bit).  This system does not have EFI or System Reserved partitions nor uses GPT formated partitions found on newer systems with Secure Boot - this has only FAT16 (Diagnostics) and NTFS (all other) partitions.

True Image 2015 was used to clone the dual-boot partitions from an older SATA drive to the new SSD when the combination was Vista and Windows 8.1.  Following the free upgrade to Windows 10 I found that I could no longer get access to my drive partitions with messages about 'lack of free space' etc.

I have worked with Acronis Support who provided links to download a recovery ISO image from their site, this worked fine for showing the installed drive partitions thus showing a problem with the System Recovery Manager and locally build recovery media.

Acronis Support provided True Image 2016 media which I installed but still had the same issue with no drives being found.

Note: The 'lack of free space' error messages seen when trying to boot ASRM or recovery media appears to have been caused by True Image trying to access my Dell Diagnostics 142MB partition which was originally hidden but was revealed after activating Acronis System Recovery Manager - hence the lack of free space!

The Solution:

Acronis Support had me do the following steps which resolved this issue, though with some strange side-effects that need to be noted!

1.  Deactivate Acronis System Recovery Manager.

2. Uninstall True Image and any extra Add-ons and Universal Restore programs.

3. Reboot

4. Clean up any residual files and registry entries left over from the above.

5. Clean any Acronis files found in the \bootwiz and \acroldr folders - note: these are hidden system folders, and in my case were on my hidden Dell system Recovery partition!

6.  Reboot again and ensure all is working fine before reinstalling a clean copy of True Image 2016 and any extras such as the Add-ons - check you have the latest version 6027 for all programs and add-ons.

7.  Activate System Recovery Manager.
Note: This is where I encountered a strange side-effect!  I had removed the \bootwiz and \acroldr folders from my Dell system recovery partition and re-hidden this and the Dell laptop diagnostics partition.  When I tried to activate the ASRM I hit an immediate error "Failed to activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. (0x7E) $module = 0)
Tag = 0x2DEF7741238DA4DA
Target file not defined (0x5F0002) $module = 0)
Tag = 0x643C5CF65CB40FEC

The only way I could get past this error was to un-hide my Dell system recovery partiton and assign a drive letter to it!  Then ASRM activated successfully and put its \bootwiz folder on that drive!

Further notes: While the ASRM could not be activated, I also could not get the locally created recovery media to boot - it errored almost immediately on a black screen!

After activating ASRM (on my Dell recovery partition) and recreating the local recovery media, I was able to use both F11 and the media to backup / restore my drive.

Note:  I was able to re-hide my Dell Diagnostics and Recovery partitions again and still retain the ability for ASRM and recovery media to continue working & seeing my hard drive partitions.

Alternative Solution:

Install the free (non-commercial use) EasyBCD utility and use this to add ISO images to the Windows start-up boot menu.

Sign in to your Acronis account and download the latest ISO image for the True Image product to add to your Windows start-up menu - this will give the equivalent of booting from a recovery CD without the need to carry the same and insert it in your CD/DVD drive.