PC total boot failure on restart after installing F11 boot time recovery

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Windows 10 Home. Fast start enabled.

Installed Acronis F11 boot time recovery option. Shutdown and Startup worked normally with F11 shown on boot. This would actually have been hibernation, as fast start enabled.

On first restart, i.e. first true full startup, Boot time message shown saying boot command not found. Thereafter PC was unbootable, same message every time.

Booted from Acronis recovery media. Disabled F11 recovery. PC still unbootable, just a flashing cursor in top left corner of black screen.

Booted again from recovery media, re-enabled F11 recovery. PC now boots normally.

What is the reason for this bizarre and dangerous scenario? How do I avoid it happening again?

Sat, 06/11/2016 - 06:42
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mvp

David, I have stopped using the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (F11 boot prompt) some time ago because of some of the side-effects it had on my computer systems such as unhiding hidden system or diagnostic partitions.

As it states in the ATIH 2016 User Guide, using ASRM modifies the Master Boot Record (MBR) of Legacy/BIOS systems and writes data to the UEFI System partition for EFI systems.

These changes really need for your system to have been shutdown fully and not placed in a hybrid hibernation state by Windows Fast Start.

See User Guide: Acronis Startup Recovery Manager and in particular, the Additional Information given for ASRM.

Additional information

Disk letters in standalone Acronis True Image might sometimes differ from the way Windows identifies drives. For example, the D: disk identified in the standalone Acronis True Image might correspond to the E: disk in Windows. The disk labels and information on partition sizes, file systems, drive capacities, their manufacturers, and model numbers can help in correctly identifying the disks and partitions.

You won't be able to use the previously activated Acronis Startup Recovery Manager if the Try&Decide is turned on. Rebooting the computer in the Try mode will allow you to use Acronis Startup Recovery Manager again.

Does Acronis Startup Recovery Manager affect other loaders?

When Acronis Startup Recovery Manager is activated, it overwrites the master boot record (MBR) with its own boot code. If you have any third-party bootmanagers installed, you will need to reactivate them after the Startup Recovery Manager has been activated. For Linux loaders (e.g. LiLo and GRUB), you might consider installing them to a Linux root (or boot) partition boot record instead of MBR before activating Acronis Startup Recovery Manager.

UEFI boot mechanism is different from the BIOS one. Any OS loader or other boot program has its own boot variable that defines a path to the corresponding loader. All loaders are stored on a special partition called EFI System Partition. When you activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager in UEFI-booted system, it changes the boot sequence by writing its own boot variable. This variable is added to the list of variables and does not change them. Since all loaders are independent and do not affect each other, there is no need to change anything before or after activating Acronis StartupRecovery Manager.

Sat, 06/11/2016 - 19:24
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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
Beginner
Posts: 2
Comments: 1

Thanks for your detailed response Steve. It seems to confirm my own suspicions that Fast Start and ASRM don't play nicely together. Fortunately I had mananged to recover the situation in a few minutes, by trial and error, without having to restore a Windows image. Method described in my first post above.

That method would not have worked if I hadn't yet created the Acronis Recovery CD. In that instance, I'd have been unable to restore a Windows image or reactivate ASRM without downloading Acronis on a different PC to create the Recovery CD, assuming of course that I had already made a backup image before activating ASRM :-)

In my view, as a former IT support/testing agent and documentation author, Acronis ought to have anticipated and prevented this issue. Having failed in that, they at least should have documented the possibility that it may occur, explained how to avoid it, and how to recover. Can't find any of that in the help, forum or knowledgebase, so I'm documenting it here to help anyone else who may suffer the issue.

Fast Start is enabled by default in Windows 10. The average user probably would not turn it off, doesn't know what hibernation is, and you have to dig fairly deep to discover that the much touted new Fast Start feature in Windows 10 is actually the hibernation feature that has been in previous Windows versions forever, effectively just renamed as Shutdown.

If there is a Fast Start settings dependency when activating ASRM, Acronis ought to pop up a warning prior to activation, to turn off Fast Start, do it automatically, or to force a system restart on activating ASRM. All obvious and easy changes.

On a more general note, I find it bizzare that Acronis have, in TI 2015 and 2016, sacrificed their earlier usable and intuitive UI, in order to be touch friendly. It's just too frustrating not to be able to see the full name of a backup, the full source and destination paths, without repeatedly resizing the panes, and to have to scroll up down and sideways through a forest of huge folder icons to find what you want. Have they not heard of word-wrapping. You could have huge buttons with small wrapping text, to be both usable and touch-friendly.

They also removed Outlook email backup and restore. I know it's easy enough to create a custom backup task for new/current emails, but I can no longer access my emails archived with earlier Acronis versions either via the current UI or the recovery CD.

I'll be saying bye-bye Acronis asap.

Sun, 06/12/2016 - 08:54