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Startup recovery manager does not prompt for F11

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Hello, I'm a new user.  I've been using Acronis for years and I just got a new HP Zbook 14 laptop with Windows 10.  I have Acronis Secure Zone on my D: drive and when I activate Acronis Recovery Manager, nothing happes at boot time.  I'm not prompted for F11.  I've used with in older versions on older laptops and it worked ok.  My book disk as SSD formatted as MBR.  Appreciate any help.

Joe

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Hello Joseph, you may not be getting the F11 prompt because your new laptop BIOS is set to prevent changes to the MBR or has an existing recovery mechanism in place that uses the same key.

I personally have stopped using the default Linux based Acronis Recovery Manager which gives the F11 key because this does not always recognise the internal drive on laptops, especially where these use Secure Boot, UEFI and GPT - you would need to turn off Secure Boot as a minimum.

Instead, I have used the Windows PE recovery media, created within Acronis True Image 2016, to create either a WIM or ISO file that I then add to the Windows Boot Manager menu and can be chosen at boot time from the GUI display of options.

For UEFI / GPT systems, the WIM file would have to be used as the UEFI boot manager would prevent boot from the ISO image.

To add the new boot entries, there is a free Boot Manager tool called EasyBCD that you can download/install, then select the Add new entry option, selecting the appropriate Acronis recovery media image file, then save the new BCD configuration.

Note: The 2016 Acronis WinPE recovery media requires that you download the Windows PE software for Windows 10 which is around 3GB in size.  If you choose to build the 2016 Acronis Universal Recovery media instead, this uses the Windows PE software for Windows 8.1 - another 3GB download.  You can have both WinPE environments installed on the same computer.

 

I have an HP that doesn't always pick up key presses after restart either.  Try disconnectiong AC power, pulling the battery, and dissipating the remaining charge by pressing the power button a few times.  When you power up again, then try F11.  Also, are you sure it's still F11?  On my HP, it's ESC and F1 that get me into the Bios and/or that let me select a different boot drive.  

On your new laptop, is secure boot enabled in the bios?  If so, you may not be able to boot to anythign other than the default Windows installation.  Most Bios will let you disable this though.

Once you're able to boot into your Acronis bootable media, as was mentioned by the above post, the linux version may not always detect hardware - I have a laptop with a flash based EMMC 64GB hard drive and ATIH LInux recovery does not detect it, but Windows PE recovery media does.