TI 2016 will not restore to new Dell XPS Win 10 Laptop
TI 2016 easily makes a disk image of the system drive to an attached USB HD
for recovery I'm booting from TI 2016 thumb drive and the disk image is on the USB HD
here's what happens:
1) select archive- no prob
2) select type of recovery- full disk
3) select items for recovery- Disk 1- C:,MBR, etc
4) disk to recover to ( target)- only the thumb drive and the USB HD are shown. The actual target, the c:// system drive of the computer is not available for selection. It's as if TI cannot see the target drive and present it for selection
what is preventing TI 2016 from targeting the drive??
is there a setting in the drive "properties" that could be responsible?
this problem does not occur on my Win 7 system


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Thanks for your quick response Steve.
I looked at using the Win PE version, but then discovered that the Windows ADK was something like a 6 GB download- is this realloy correct??
I was afraid that I was getting into some sort of deep water with the Win PE.
Is it actually pretty straightforward once you install the downloads??
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also I'm noticing that this new computer boots on UEFI rather than legacy BIOS.
Would this be causing my problem??
I think I have the option in BIOS setup to change the boot to legacy BIOS.
Should I try that??
Thanks
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Hi Robert, the ADK is quite large but you do not need to install everything that is included, only the Windows PE components which will halve the size. Once installed, the process is pretty straight-forward in following the prompts and selecting how you want to create the output rescue media, i.e. on a CD or USB stick?
You could try using the Legacy option in BIOS but using the WinPE media would be better - if you try the Legacy option, it will give you an idea of what can be seen in terms of your internal drive - the boot menu can be a little daunting as you may see a lot more choices with both Legacy and UEFI choices being offered.
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Thanks Steve
I'll try the WinPE route
The UEFI is more secure and is more advanced than the legacy BIOS, so probably a step backwards to tamper with that.
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That was easy enough.
The bootable PE Media was installed on a thumb drive.
However, on BIOS boot-up, after pressing F12, the thumb drive does not show up among the various boot choices.
Should I have installed an .iso file instead??
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Hi Robert, if you were able to boot from the USB drive before then it should be available now assuming that it created OK with the WinPE rescue media. I assume that you have taken the options within the Rescue Media builder to create the media directly on the USB stick, and that you have not changed the BIOS to Legacy. You may need to turn off Secure Boot in the UEFI settings if that is preventing the USB drive from being recognised.
It wouldn't harm to burn a WinPE boot CD in addition to the USB drive to give yourself an extra option for recovery.
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I got the Thumb drive squared away with the WinPE rescue media, so the computer will boot from the USB stick.
However, TI 2016 will not see the system drive of the computer no matter what.
I have turned off Secure Boot, I have tried restore using legacy boot, both with the WinPE and the standard Acronis recovery media.
Nothing will allow TI to see that drive.
This is a brand new Dell XPS 15 9550- maybe it has some new security feature making the system drive unaccessable.
Any ideas??
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Robert, the next step will be to identify exactly what the drive is, i.e. the make and model of the drive. It may be that you will need to install additional device drivers for the drive as described in the 'sticky post' in the Best Practises Forum.
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Robert,
I believe that your Dell has one of the new NVMe M.2 SSD drives? If that is the case then you will need to supply a driver for the drive. Did you use the latest Win 10 ADK to build your WinPE thumb drive? If yes a driver for the drive should have been included, if not then you would need to add the driver.
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I did use the Win 10 ADK
The Drive is an NVMe PM 951 NVMe SAMSU - the driver details show 5 .sys drivers.
So, I need to find the .inf files that contain these in order to add them to the WinPE boot media, right??
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I'm looking at my WinPE files on the usb drive-
There is a sources folder containing boot.wim, but there is no drivers folder at all.
It looks like the WinPE boot media was created without any drivers
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You will need to refer to the link provided by Steve above to add the drivers to your WinPE media so that your drive can be found.
A good source for drivers can be found at this link:
http://www.win-raid.com/t29f25-Recommended-AHCI-RAID-and-NVMe-Drivers.h…
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Wow, this problem is very stubborn.
None of the drivers I've added to the boot.wim file have worked.
Searching the web I see lots of people having similar problems accessing these new SSDs.
I'm not able to find online an actual driver for this SSD.
Most of what I have seen online relates to this same Dell XPS 13/15 laptop.
I'm hoping someone at Acronis will publish a very detailed and specific solution.
Meanwhile, it looks like I'm dead in the water for now
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Which driver did you add to the WinPE? Did you try the one from the link I provided? Which driver file by name was used?
I would suggest that after you extract the contents of the WHQL.rar file that you add all the drivers listed to the WinPE wim file and see if that helps.
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Robert,
You need to add drivers for the controller the drive is attatched to. Many NVMe M.2 drives have the controller built into the drive. This is the case with the Samsung 950 Pro drives for example. Your drive may not have the controller built into the drive. You should look at Storage Controllers in Device Manager to see what controller looks like it is controlling the drive. Then track down the inf file for the controller using the guide.
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I really appreciate your help.
I used your link to download:
64bit Intel NVMe Windows Driver v1.3.0.1007 WHQL.rar
On extraction there are 2 .sys files and one .INF and one catalog file
The WinPE supposedly can only add drivers that are .inf & won't accept the .sys files.
Anyway, I put them all into the C://drivers folder and also added the .inf search results for the controller drivers, then ran the WDIT routine to build a new WinPE boot file.
Turned off secure boot
Got the same result- WinPE booted up fine but could not see the system drive.
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Hi Robert.
Just to be sure, could you go to contorl panel and annotate the win 10 ADK version there and post back? Could you also open command prompt and type "winver" and post your OS and build # as well?
Please then navigate to C:\Program Files\Windows Kits
Is it 10 only or are there multiple versions (just to be sure you didn't have an older version there already).
The Samsung 951 is an OEM drive, but windows 10 ADK should pick it up automatically - others with this drive are having success. Unfortunately, Samsung, nor Dell offer direct drivers for this particular drive. You might want to grab a free copy of DoubleDriver and let it scan your machine (select all drivers that are not Microsoft) and let it grab them all and save them somewhere. You can then inject the drivers, but make sure to force injection of non-signed drivers (just in case).
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825070.aspx
To install an unsigned driver, use /ForceUnsigned to override the requirement that drivers installed on X64-based computers must have a digital signature. For example,
Dism /Image:C:\test\offline /Add-Driver /Driver:C:\drivers\mydriver.inf /ForceUnsigned
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I agree with Mustang and Bobbo, Mustangs point about the controller driver is spot on as I at least have no idea how Dell has leveraged the M.2 drive in the system. It could be that the M.2 drive is running through or against a SATA Express interface in which case the criver for that controller may not be present in the Win 10 ADK. The other way the drive could be leveraged is directly to the CPU. In that case I believe that current chipset drivers would need to be available. The use of a direct to CPU interface for your machine I think is unlikely but I cannot say for certain. Maybe some googling might shed some light on that.
Bobbos suggestion about double checking that you do have all your ducks lined up so to speak is also very valid.
Keep digging and let us know.
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The ADK version I have installed is:
10.1.10586.0
And for Windows Kits, I have only 10 installed
One thing I am unsure of- when I am looking for a driver, for example one of the controller drivers "spaceport.sys", I do a search of the INF folder with the advanced search looking for spaceport.sys within the INF file- the search results in a yellow hilighted file "spaceport.inf"
I will then install spaceport.inf into the WinPE. But I've noticed that spaceport.inf (maybe 4k) is significantly smaller than spaceport.sys (maybe 120k), so how could spaceport.inf really contain the driver??
I'm concerned that I am not getting the actual drivers into the WinPE
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Robert, the xxx.inf file is essentially a text file which contains references to the other required device driver files that are needed for supporting the specific device, i.e. your spaceport.inf will point to spaceport.sys and possibly other .sys files.
The best method to determine what files are required is to look at Device Manager for the controller / adapter then look at the Driver Details which will pop-up a new panel with a list of all required files - see example attached.
Note: the name of the .inf file will be shown on the Events tab in Device Manager.
Attachment | Size |
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338309-126649.png | 21.42 KB |
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Robert,
Spaceport.sys appears to be a driver for Microsoft Storage Spaces so it probably is not necessary as it is undoubtedly already in your Windows 10 installation and should have not bearing on seeing your drive in WinPE. I cannot imagine Dell using a storage spaces drive as an OS repository.
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Steve
I can see the various .sys files for the devices in Device Manager
Big question:
Do I copy the .sys files to the "C:\\ Driver" folder that DSIM will reference in order to add drivers to the WinPE bootable media??
I had been under the impression that DSIM could only add .inf files to the media, that it couldn't use .sys files
Maybe that's my problem- I haven't been copying the .sys files
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You do not seem to understand how the drivers work. The inf file is the installation file that specifies what files need to be added and what registry entries need to be made. Please read my guide carefully. It explains how to look at the inf file to see the SourceDisks section to determine what sys and dll files are needed. These files need to be collected and placed in a folder along with the inf file. All the files need to be collected from a 64 bit system as the WinPE is 64 bit and requires 64 bit drivers. If you are working on a 32 bit system, you can't get the drivers from that system.
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Mustang
I think I finally have the driver files figured out.
However, on my previous go around with DISM, the last step to "unmount-Wim" had an error- some sort of trouble dismounting the image.
Now when I try to create a new WinPE adding the drivers, DISM gives me the message that the image is already mounted for read/write access.
Error: 0xc1420127
How do I clear/delete/unmount this previous image so that I can create another?
Thanks
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You'll need to use the dism /cleanup-wim command
https://www.msigeek.com/2635/unmount-and-clean-up-a-wim-image-using-dep…
Sometimes, a reboot will do the trick as well, but not always (you may still have it mounted and/or stuck in the reyclebin in a very hidden location). Try the cleanup command first. Otherwise, whatever is in your mount folder is probably just a blank file or folder that was locked (usually happens when you copy and paste as Explorer holds onto the information in a temp locationl). After rebooting you should be able to log back in and delete it normally - your WIM file should be fine too, even though you got this error, it is probably fine.
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The cleanup command worked great
Redoing the WinPE in DISM I get the same error at the last step (dismount)
It says that the directory could not be completely dismounted- possibly some application that still has files open within the mount directory.
Close these files and unmount again
How do I discover and close these files??
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I have this issue too at times, I've never really found the cause. Usually though, it's the copying and pasting of files as Windows Explorer somehow seems to hold onto them in memory from the copy. Honestly though, your image shoudl be fine as it still adds them. Your leftover mounted directory usually just contains a blank folder or 1 file in that folder which has really been added to the .WIM anyway.
I would reboot and just delete the leftover folder and you should be good to go. If you have something like 7zip (free) you can actually use it to navigate the .wim file and should see the new driver files in Windows\System32\Drivers - just to be sure.
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Thanks, Bobbo
I did take a look at my boot.wim with 7 zip
All my new drivers are there, along with a huge number of other drivers.
However- the WinPE boot will still not see the NVMe drive on the XPS laptop
I've added NVMe disk drivers and controller drivers- I'm not sure where to look next.
I've got secure boot turned off as well.
Maybe I'll try a legacy BIOS boot. The last time I tied, it wouldn't recognise my WinPE as bootable, but one more time...
Interesting- I had a chat with Acronis support. They had a simple answer: "Acronis does not support NVMe SSD drives"
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I would say at this point that Dell has done something to prevent the drive being accessed, possibly something in the UEFI configuration. Since you're not the only one with same machine whom has experienced this problem it's obvious that the issue is not individual machine specific.
I would contact Dell about it but I wouldn't hope for much.
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I'll give Dell a try
Maybe the best bet is to go on the Dell forum and see if any other users have figured it out.
The Acronis Tech Support guy did say that the Acronis Development team was working on a solution to be released in a new update, but he had no idea when.
Thanks for all of the help.
I've certainly learned a lot, even if I didn't solve the problem yet
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