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Universal Restore

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I had to replace the motherboard in my PC (running Win 10 Pro 64-Bit), so I decided to use the Acronis Universal Restore tool to avoid havin g to re-install windows and the rest of the apps. 

I have used this tool in the past (with older versions of Acronis) so I am quite familiar with it.

After I downloaded the Universal Restore Bootable MediaBuilder (AcronisTrueImage2016_ur_en-US) tool, I created a bootable dvd with Acronis Universal Restore and Acronis True Image.

I booted the pc with the newly crerated dvd and started Universal Restore only to be told that it could NOT find an operating system. 

I disconnected all the drives except the SSD drive with the operating system and rebooted.  I got the same message. 

I know that the SSD has the OS.  I used a bootable dvd with Acronis Disk Director and it clearly shows that the SSD drive has a Primary MBR partition and is marked ACTIVE.    

What did I do wrong?

 

George

 

   

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A couple of things

1) Are you sure the new motherboard supports legacy/MBR OS?  Most will, but new ones generally are set to UEFI mode only and/or have secure boot enabled.  Make sure secure boot is disabled.  Then make sure that the bios is configured to allow legacy/CSM boot - this is the one that's probably preventing it from working.  

2) when you restored the image, did you make sure to boot your recovery media to match how the OS was originally installed?  If not, the OS may not be bootable and that could be the problem.  If the OS was originally legacy/MBR then boot the recovery media as legacy.  If the original OS was UEFI/GPT, then boot the recovery media as UEFI to do the restore.  How you boot it will determine how the disk is partioned when it's restored and will determine if your OS is bootable or not.

3) Once that's done, then do the same thing for the Universal restore media and make sure you boot it correctly as well.

Check out this thread with screenshots to show the difference between legacy and UEFI boot and how your one time boot menu should allow you to pick one or the other if your bios is properly configured.  The example is from a Dell, so the specfiic Dell settings will most likely be different than your motherboard, but the goal is to ensure that your one time boot gives you the option to select both modes so you know exactly which one is being used. 

Also, I'd recommend using a USB flash drive recovery over a DVD/CD as it may simplify things - not all systems are capable of booting DVD/CD's in UEFI mode and some will automatically default to legacy mode. If the system is capable of both legacy and UEFI booting, using a USB drive will give you both options under your bios one-time boot menu (if the bios is properly configued).  

Make sure you have the most current bios firmware installed on your new motherboad too.  If you aren't and you do upgrade, you may need to go back in and change the settings again - they often get reset to default when a new firmware is installed - not always, but depends on your motherboard. 

The big change with older versions is that you first need to do a normal restore, using the regular rescue medium. Then, you boot the computer on the Universal Restore REcovery Medium version and you perform the UR. 2 operations instead of one.

Note that if you have Windows 10 as the image you restore, I would first try to boot without UR. It might just work.

The motherboard does support both MBR and UEFI, and it has a very recent BIOS (12/24/2015).   Since I was sort-of out of ideas at the time, I took a "shot in the dark" and tried to boot Windows.  To my surprise, Win 10 booted with no problem.  Since I had already downloaded the latest drivers from the motherboard manufacturers website, I just updated the drivers and now the system is in great shape.  

BTW, thanks for the reply and the useful information !!!     

As I mentioned in my previous post,  since I was sort-of out of ideas at the time, I took a "shot in the dark" and tried to boot Windows.  To my surprise, Win 10 booted with no problem. 

I suppose this is a new feature for Win 10?

Thanks for your reply and helpful information !

 

 

Windows 10 is just better at providing driver support for installed hardware than previous versions were.  Makes things much easier!