Try and Decide ...

Mustang ... GREAT JOB !! That is a huge clue that Acronis engineers should be able to decipher and make the necessary software adjustments to the T&D module. Unfortunately that does not help those with laptops, but it sure gives us a ton of information to lead us down that path.

It also puts to bed the notion that the Samsung 850 Pro SSD hardware/firmware is an issue.

Again .. great job

Robert Wagner
Black River Computer Services
Cape Coral, Florida

Paul,

That is great news. I am curious about the partition structure of the disk, can you tell us that? Maybe something there that will give a clue about why other basic GPT disks won't work.

Here's the partition structure.

I should also mention that although TnD did survive a reboot properly in this case with two GPT disks, the same was not true when I tested with two MBR disks. When I forced a reboot with two MBR disks and chose the Continue option, I got the endless reboot loop. The only way back into Windows was to chose the Discard option.

I would suggest that all the problems with TnD are not specific hardware related, but instead Acronis programming problems.

Mustang ... Your suggestion to shrink the C: Partition and create a new GPT Data partition was completed. The new partition is called "Mustang", Drive M:

Acronis 5586 was started, drilled down to "try and decide", and answered yes to the nag screen.

Attached image "Mustang 1" was encountered ...

System was rebooted and the attached Acronis error "Mustang 2" was displayed. Using the "continue" option only send the system into an endless loop back to the same message.

I entered the BIOS, changed the boot option from UEFI to legacy and rebooted back into the BIOS, changed the boot option from Legacy to UEFI ... exited via reboot and system booted properly.

Attachment "Mustang 3" shows the hard drive as it stood during the test.

My question at this point is how does T&D "know" what data partition to use ?? Why would it choose "Mustang M:" as data partitions X and Z are available too ....

Strange behavior to say the least ................................

Robert Wagner
Black River Computer Services
Cape Coral, Florida

Robert,

When you open TnD you see the screen shown in mustang_1.jpg. In the middle of that window you see Options and Storage for virtual changes with a C: in blue. Click on that C: symbol next to Storage for virtual changed and then chose drive M:. Then you can start TnD. When you started TnD before you were telling it to store the virtual changes on C:. I have found things don't work quite right when the C: is selected for virtual changes on a GPT disk.

Mustang .... haha .. As they say down here in the South ... "Well slap my ... ahhhhhh ... "Back" and call me Sally!!" I did not know that !! .... I am embarrassed.

Ok ... I changed the Storage to Mustang M:, followed the prompts and the results were the same ... Ughhh

See attached Mustang M 1 and Mustang M 2

Robert Wagner
Black River Computer Services
Cape Coral, Florida

Hi Paul, Robert,

I tried the same on my test rig. Created a 10GB partition lettered D: on same basic GPT disk that produced the 2 errors from my original post "Cannot start T+D because the SYSTEM partition is dynamic" and upon a second attempt "T+D and Acronis Startup Manager cannot work simultaneously. You should deactivate Acronis Startup Manager first." I capitalized SYSTEM because it is obvious that the system partition is what T+D is flagging as dynamic. I received these exact same errors using the D: partition as the target for T+D so it appears that secondary partitions on my disk do not work either.

Paul, I believe you are right that the programming for T+D is at issue here, always have. The question is, what triggers T+D to see the disk as dynamic? What triggers T+D to fail to start? What triggers the loop failure on some MBR disks?

In Robert's case his error is different. A failed to start error is another issue all together I think. On my system I think that if T+D did not detect my system partition as dynamic the app would run. On Robert's the app won't run at all. On some MBR installs there is the loop error discussed in this thread. Clearly the app has programming issues. Hopefully development and the Engineers can sort it out.

Mustang and Enchantech .... "Some" progress here, but the test still fails.

1. System was booted fresh
2. Acronis was started and Acronis Startup Manager was checked to make sure it was NOT active. Which it was NOT.
3. T and D was loaded and checked to make sure that the X (data) drive was protected with T&D, and storage was set to the M: (Mustang) drive.
4. T and D was started and the necessary nag screen Ok'd
5. T and D failed to start error again ............. Attached "Mustang MX Startup Off 1"

I then checked the Acronis Startup Manager again and found it, to my surprise, to be "Active" .... I then DE-Activated it. Rebooted expecting the boot error screen to appear as in other tests (Which requires a trip to the BIOS twice to get the system to boot), but the system booted successfully.

Should we now believe, that at least MY problem with the boot error, is triggered by a reboot with Acronis Startup Manager being "Active" ???

All in all at least PART of the problem solution is starting to materialize ................

Robert Wagner
Black River Computer Services
Cape Coral, Florida

Robert:

What happens when you chose C: to protect and M: to store the changes?

Bob,

Very strange that TnD would see your Windows 10 system as being on a dynamic disk. From your screenshot, it is clearly a basic GPT disk. The only thing I see different between our systems is that I have some unallocated space at the end of the drive. SSD manufacturers recommend leaving 10% of the drive as unallocated space to improve performance. I don't know if that would make a difference.

It would appear there is an element of luck involved with TnD.

Robert,

I would say that your reboot issue being triggered by an active Startup Manager is a resonable assumption. I am wondering now if this may be where the problem in programming is. If say for example attempting to start T+D somehow triggers a start of Startup Manager then you choose to start T+D I can see how that would trigger the errors that I am seeing. In your case the T+D app still refuses to run, why is still a mystery I think.

Mustang ... when I choose to protect the C: partition and store the changes on M:, the same exact error occurs.

Enchantech ... I believe that is exactly what is happening, the reboot issue is being triggered by an active Startup Manager.

The startup of T&D DOES in fact appear to cause an Activation of the Acronis Startup Manager. The strange thing tho', is that T&D is NOT suppose to run simultaneously with the Startup Manager Active, yet, some snippet of code is obviously starting it .............. sounds to me like someone forgot to enter a period after an "IF" statement.

Robert Wagner
Black River Computer Services
Cape Coral, Florida

To all you learned people, if I change my boot priority from Legacy to UEFI & convert my OS consisting HDD to Basic GPT & keep my other two HDDs as MBR format, Will there be some kind of conflicts in running the system smoothly or this kind of configuration is possible? Thanks.

Paresh

There should be no problems.

I would suggest making a backup of the partition you are going to convert beforehand.

Thanks Colin will give it a shot this weekend.

FYI, i removed the only HD i had with GPT style partitions (it was a datadisk anyway, outside of T&D interest).

No joy, still the same issue.

After some days of contacting support on the matter i've exchanged some email with a kind junior support from Acronis.
He told me (2 or 3 days ago) that he was forwarding the ticket do a senior technician.

If any news come to me i'll let you know.

C.

Have sended support every info they asked for, still they ask us to send the same info again and again, but STILL NO SOLUTION !!
Have sended these info many,many times over and over again !

Very dissapointing and frustrating !
Why not being honest and just telling the truth; ATIH 2016 NOT COMPATIBLE WITH SSD AND EUFI-BIOS !!

In the mean time we keep on waiting for the update which will solve the problem..............

I know it must be frustrating to not be able to use Acronis with some external drives- but if you're worried about losing data- in the short term, just install a second internal drive- they're cheap enough.

I now do backups to both my external drive and second internal drive- alternating each day.
Joe

Latest from Acronis Support which I will share on the Try and Decide issue ................ I am traveling across country at this time, but will watch for an Acronis response and post it ............

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello Robert,

Thank you for uploading the reports.

Robert, the issue need further investigation. Hence, I have forwarded the issue to Developers for further investigation. It will take some time to reproduce the issue and verify the reports. We will get back to you on Sept 14, 2015 to share the status of the issue.

Please let me know if you have any further questions. I will be happy to assist you.

--
Best regards,
Narendra Singh
Expert Support Engineer
Acronis Customer Central

About the same answer i got: after a few days they wrote me again pointing me to this KB:

https://kb.acronis.com/content/46475

wich of course all of us already tried...

Carlo Demichelis wrote:

About the same answer i got: after a few days they wrote me again pointing me to this KB:

https://kb.acronis.com/content/46475

wich of course all of us already tried...

There goes your answer, but not all cause is lost as we can wait for next year major release with the issue fix.

Hello Everyone

Our development team is working on the issue.
Thank you in advance for cooperation!

Wish you a good day,

This is the response I had after opening a support ticket with Acronis

Thank you very much for the log!
I have created a task to our development to investigate the issue. I will recontact you as soon as possible when I get an answer from the development.
Should you have any questions in the meantime, I am at your service.

Piet,

you said in an earlier post: " Indeed, ATIH2014 still is a fine piece of software, but not compatible with SSD ."

ATIH 2014 is indeed compatible with an SSD. I am currectly using a 500 GB SSD on my Win 7 Pro 64 Bit OS
and the "Try & Decide " works just fine.

You can see more stats on my PC below.

I just found out today that ATI 2016 brought back Try & Decide (after dropping it in ATIH 2015). I was elated to say the least!

However - I am still using Win 7 Pro 64 bit and have yet to upgrade to Win 10 Pro. But I won't upgrade to Win 10 Pro until almost 1 year from now before the Free update to Win 10 Expires. I want to make sure many of the bugs are worked out first.

Perhaps your problem with Try & Decide is due to some bugs in Win 10? (sorry - I forgot if you are using Win 10 or not).

Rickmon

Installed Acronis True Image 2016 v19.0 Build 5620 on windows 8 1TB Seagate simple basic HDD with legacy boot MBR configuration, believe me guys not even an iota of a difference is noticeable in the behaviour of Try & Decide mode. Its still misbehaving like its predecessor builds. It was such a disappointing & frustrating experience, I thought against to try it on windows 10 & save myself from going through the pointless rigmarole of the whole process. Any feed back from you guys will be a valuable learning experience for me. Thanks.

I bought a Samsung 850 pro and put a clean win 10 x64 install on it. The formatting handled by the windows installation. Its UEFI. Disk Management confirms it as basic and not dynamic. T&D fails because the system partition is dynamic.

I am following the thread with interest

Yes, I have the same problem , Win7 x64, Samsung 250GB and UEFI-bios. ( on ASUS Z97-K, 32GB RAM, i7-Intel )
Have contacted support many,many times and gave them all the info they asked for, but now Im done with it !
They keep asking for info ,and sometimes the same info they already had, still NO SOLUTION,even the latest updates dont show any improvements .

You just can not use T&D anymore, WHEN A REBOOT IS REQUIRED, only "DISCARD" will bring me back into Windows again !!

Will wait for the "real good update",which will solve the problem ............

5 days to the end of the trial....

I have my doubts this problem will be solved before the new version of ATI 2017. The reason is simple this version of Try and Decide is using the same source code of ATI 2014 but tweaked to work with Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 so it carried over all the limitations as the previous one that came with ATI 2014. The only way to fixed this issue is to code the program from scratch to include all the required functionalities and for now that is almost impossible to do with ATI 2016.

Acronis claim they did a major write of the try+and+decide module rather than merely porting the ATI 2104 version. However they may not have been particularly successful.

At this stage I suspect they have more pressing bugs to fix or ones requiring less effort.

Ian

IanL-S wrote:

At this stage I suspect they have more pressing bugs to fix or ones requiring less effort.

Ian

Actually ATI2016 is plagued by bugs, as far as i tested. Main "purpose" of the program is anyway working quite well ("normal backups").

For example, every time i try to set up a nonstop backup, may it be a disk or files, it screws up in a matter of 2 or 3 hours, in various and colorful ways.

Main backup *is* working, but those are things that do work well even on free alternatives. What may justify the expense for ATI is exotic (and useful) options as nonstop backup, T&D and so on. Now, it's a month i try to make those work, sent various logs and files to support but... no joy.

4 Days for me to the end of the trial. I think i'll be *forced* (and i insist on "forced", because i wanted to buy ATI2016 for the features it has) to use alternative solutions, at least, until they make work what it should have worked from day one.

C.

Yet, when they advertise the product- I get their emails - will they bother to inform the reader of such problems? Not likely. Instead, they brag about how great it is.

Even if they solve the bugs- they still have an inferior user interface compared to earlier versions. I still have the 2013 version on my older PC and I much prefer that user interface.
Joe

If you have particular concerns about the ATI 2016 implementation, I suggest that you report your issues/concerns about Acronis 2015 using the in app Feedback feature which is in the Help section of the GUI (open book icon). This is the only way bring your concerns/ideas to the attention of development team.

I agree that there are an unusually large number of bugs with the release builds of ATI 2016, some of which were not in any of the public beta.

Ian

Ian,

if you look at this thread, it's a month we are doing bug reports to Acronis (via the program and not only).

If you look at the forum it looks like a warfield.

It's ok to "betatest" and, in the while, trying for free a program for a month.

What is not ok is to sell a program wich is clearly not even in a beta stage (much more alpha) for 49€ and induce people to rely on it for the safety of their data.

Still 3 days of trial, but i hardly believe they will be able to make it worth my trust in that time.
And yes, i'm really sad to say that.

For what its worth, my SSD is an HP customised SEAGATE ST240FP0021. And that fails to run TnD.

I have also been/are in conversation with one of the Acronis Expert Support Engineers, so there is still work being done on resolving the issue.

I would also support strongly the warning in the previous message from Mustang, Test the recovery disk before attempting to test any procedure that could destroy the O/S. Its much easier to repair a failed TnD attempt if you KNOW the backup procedure works. I've done it the wrong way before and had to re-install again.

If I get any further info/results with support I'll report back as well. As long as its not requested to keep it under wraps.

Hello Everyone,
I strongly recommend everyone who faces problems with Try and Decide feature in Acronis True Image 2016 contacting our support (if you haven't done it yet).

1) make sure that you have the latest program build (check for updates in installed application)
2) check if existing limitations are not applicable to your case (http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2016/#299.html + Try&Decide cannot be used for protecting dynamic disks)
3) contact our support team http://www.acronis.com/support/contact-us.html

At the moment we have several reported issues and development is working on fixing/investigating them. However, it turns out that most of the cases are system-specific i.e. strongly related to particular configuration. Even when some of the problems have similar symptoms, they still have different root causes.

That is why it is important to contact support and investigate each particular situation.

Thank you for understanding!

Hi I have a Samsung 840 Pro 512GB Primary Partition. It is Basic GPT with a UEFI bios boot. (Image attached).

T&D failed once the computer was rebooted. A restore from backup was required. It now does the failed to start error.

I am posting this to monitor future progress on this issue as my support ran out 4 days ago. Great.

Michael,

Two things, 1 is that recovery issues do not have the 30 day limit on support and the other is that you should follow Anna's recommendation in contacting support with this known issue.

Hi Enchantec
Thanks for the comments, I was lucky enough to be offered a free licence and I have been in contact with Acronis support over this - supplying quite a few logs of the problem. (Hopefully this doesn't break any confidentiality clause). I have always been keen to follow courteous requests for help with like courtesy. . TnD is a great feature I would like to see. However it has also proved to be a boon. I know the recovery disc works for me, even on my slightly upmarket hardware.

I was make small test with my machine.
Information:
OS: Windows 10x64 (UEFI mode)
HDD: Toshiba 1T (GPT)
I try setup ATI 2016 lastest. And I try with T & D. It shows error same Robert Wagner. Close T & D and try again, it shows error F11 active. May be, T & D active wrong funtion.
Please see my attach.
Note:
- Acronis rescue media (windows PE & Linux) was error when try active F11. Must rename two files ramdisk.dat & ramdisk64.dat to ramdisk_merged.dat & ramdisk_merged64.dat.
- Active F11 error "Bios disk number 128 not found" (version 2015 same)
- Acronis rescue media linux can dectect wifi card but it can not find any access point (version 2015 ok)

Just tried the new ATI build 5634 on win 8 pro 64 bit, Intel Mother Board DH77EB,1TB Seagate HDD, BIOS with MBR format. To my dismay the end result was pathetic as usual, T&D just simply refused to behave. Its really amazing to observe how Acronis is coming out with build after build without any concrete solution to its key component Try & Decide. I would also like to include, out of all the people who have reported their grievances related to Try & Decide to Acronis through this forum or directly, how many of these have been resolved by Acronis? Since the time of ATI 2016's inception not a single user has had a satisfactory experience with Try & Decide app. I do not see any point of Acronis producing new build every time, if they are not going to resolve the plight of their loyal customers. All we get to read is promises & the useless trouble shooting links which do nothing but aggravate our patience. Its high time Acronis took some serious steps to resolve this issue otherwise we will all be left with nothing but a piece of junk in the disguise of ATI 2016.

Paresh, did you look at the release notes for the new build?

If it had mentioned T&D then you may have a case to moan but as far as I know, Acronis have said they are having problems with it and the new builds are resolving the easier and possibly crucial problem bugs in the main program, the one that does the backup and restore etc.
As far as a key component, its not. They brought it back after customer complaints, myself among them.

These problems are hardware related ones, that has been proved as it does work on simple installations and they will need time to sort it out.
I have a support ticket open and have sent logs in. I'm assured that they are looking into the problem so will wait for a specific response on T&D.
In the meantime, I have had one support ticket resolved very fast - I'm impressed with that so know that when they can correct a problem, even one of my own making, they respond quickly.
All software has bugs, even Windows 10 and Microsoft wont even tell us what they are fixing.

So be patient, it will get resolved.

One final thought, True Image is also/primarily used to make a backup and then restore that backup succesfully, have you done that procedure? If so then you know the prime usage works.
If not, I'd advise you to do that. IF T&D fails or corrupts the drive, then a backup is the way back. Only if you have a tested backup should you even decide to try (pardon the pun) to use the Try & Decide functionality.

Mike, No doubt there has been a remarkable improvement as far as the backup & restore is concerned over its predecessor versions & does work faster & flawlessly but this forum being specifically meant for Try & Decide my laments & concerns were also meant for the same. By mentioning T&D as a key component, what I meant was one of the key components {No offense intended} because I use it extensively & although it was laid off by Acronis in the 2015 version I was one such person who did not upgrade to 2015 & stuck with 2014 & I am still using due to its absence, the drawback in the T&D is a major reason for me to not to migrate to windows 10 which made me vent out a little, my apologies. So definitely, I really felt concerned when it showed no signs of working to its full potential in build after build. Thanks for your sincere advice to have patience which I am going to heed & sit over it like a brooding hen till the anomalies in the app are fully resolved. Thanks once again.

Hmm, I have the same system on Win7 since version 2014 where Try&Decide always worked.
No success to get it to work in the 2016 edition. Bummer.

.

.

Hello everyone.

I'm not sure if my case corresponds to the ones I read about in this topic but I think it might be interesting(to you and to me) to share my experience.

I'm using ATI2016 for a few weeks now, on a computer with SSD drive from Corsair, 250 GB, GPT , UEFI Bios on Asus Main Board.
The first week all worked fine. This means that T&D worked as it should.
Up until yesterday when I decided to start T&D on a moment that my computer just woke up from hibernation.
When I tried to activate T&D I got an error message saying that Try and Decide couldn't be started. After clicking OK, the screen tells me that T&D is switched off but that 4,1 GB of data is already used for T&D.
And then ATI is partially blocked because the software thinks that T&D is active but it's not. And all of the functions on the T&D screen are greyed out as well as the "make a decission" popup in the system tray.
Even uninstalling Acronis is not possible because Acronis wants me to turn off T&D before uninstalling.

And then the hard way, complete ATI removal with the removal tool and a complete reinstall but no, T&D quit working and won't resume its acitvities.
The same error returns.

I already spent hours with Acronis support but useful answers up until now.

I uploaded a few screenshots.

Regards

RHE

To whom it might be of interest.
(An addition to my previous message)

After having updated the bios on my ASUS motherboard (Z97 WIfi Pro (ac)) to the most recent version I get exact the same error message as the one that's been talking about in this thread.
So, since the update of the BIOS, Acronis software says it can't start TND because the partition is dynamic.
It's not dynamic, 250% sure.

I've informed Acronis support and I hope (together with you) for an update to come

I am still waiting for resolution regarding the Try and Decide module of ATI 2016, cause I won't be buying it until it's fix... all my machines are using SSD and I don't want to go thru all the problems the others are having... But I have a slim hope this issue will be fixed.

Whilst we are waiting for a resolution on the Try & Decide problem, could any of you try the Acronis Secure Zone creation on the same pc?

I'm not sure if its me or my pc but when I tried it, the process did not complete.

Its probably me but it might be related and I'd like to know if it is just me /my pc before I go ahead and spend too much time on it.
It may also be Kaspersky as thats been a problem on the Macbook making it sooooo slow as to be unusable, so maybe it also translates to Windows 10.
Anyway please have a go and let me know.
Thanks
Mike

For what its worth, this is the response from Acronis tech about the T&D problem
We have found out that the root cause of the issue is the following:
the software is trying to set some variables in firmware and the system does not understand the the environment option that was entered. As the firmware denies new UEFI variables creation, try&decide cannot work on the machine.

The development decided to find workarounds for the issue. That could take several months but if you do not mind, I will leave the ticket open to inform you when I get some news.

With the beta I had problems with some UEFI PCs as far as the Secure Zone was concerned. It worked fine on no name UEFI PCs but on my Medion tablet it all went wrong when rebooting. As I don't see the point of the SZ on most machines, I haven't tried it recently.