Acronis 2017 bootable USB fails to load program
I reinstalled Acronis True Image 2017 on my computer that had crashed recently. After the installation, the software indicated an update was available, and I selected to have it installed. The program indicates under Account “Version 2017, Build 8058", and “The product is up to date.” I used the Acronis Rescue Media Builder to create a bootable USB flash drive. The program indicated that the creation process was successful, and when I checked the drive properties I found that the total size of files copied was 603 mb. However, when I tried booting the computer from the USB drive, the Acronis program started but froze after a few moments. The screen first showed a black and white image with a message “Starting Acronis loader ...”, then a blue Acronis True Image screen with four options of running the software. I selected the first option, "Acronis True Image", after a which another blue Acronis screen appeared with a long list of patent numbers. Finally, another black and white screen displayed with the message “Loading, please wait ...” The screen then went black, and stayed that way for several minutes until I gave up and turned off the computer. I repeated the process but instead selected the third option of "Acronis True Image (64 bit)", but the results were the same. The brand of flash drive that I used is Verbatim. I decided to try a different brand and created another bootable USB using SanDisk. However, the results were exactly the same.
My computer is a one-year-old Dell desktop model XPS 8910 running the latest update of Windows 10. To start the computer with the Acronis bootable USB, I pressed F12 to activate Boot Options when the Dell startup screen appeared. On the screen that appeared afterwards, under the heading of Legacy Options, I scrolled down to the second option of booting from a USB storage device. At the top of the screen, a heading indicated “Boot mode is set to: Legacy; Secure boot: Off.” On another attempt, I tried a different boot option. Under the heading of "UEFI Options", I scrolled down to the boot option of “USB1 - UEFI OS (Verbatim Store n Go 8.07). On this attempt, a small black and white screen appeared with three selections. I selected the first option, “Acronis True Image (64 bit)”. After a few brief progress messages, once again a black and white screen appeared with the message “Loading, please wait ...”, and again the program froze.
As a relevant aside, when I first purchased and installed Acronis True Image 2017 a year ago, I created a bootable disk. However, when I tried booting from the disk, I experienced the exact same results as I described above using the Legacy boot option for a USB drive.
Please advise me on how to successfully create an Acronis bootable USB drive without having to resort to the complicated and technical option of “WinPE-based media with Acronis plug-in” described on pages 128 through 132 of the Acronis True Image 2017 User Guide. Thanks for your help.


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In reply to David, welcome to these User… by truwrikodrorow…

Steve:
Thanks for the prompt reply. First, msinfo32 confirmed what I already suspected, that my version of Windows uses the Legacy boot option; as I indicated in my original posting, the screen displayed when the boot options is invoked at startup clearly indicates at the top heading "Boot mode is set to: Legacy". Second, the screen shots shown in KB 59877 match the displays I received during my attempt to boot from the USB in the default Legacy mode, except that the final screen showing that Acronis has loaded never appears. Finally, I used an 8 gb flash drive with the file format set at the default FAT 32 in both of my trials. Your advice to use the WinPE version of the rescue media corresponds to the tentative conclusion that I had drawn. I was hoping to avoid such an involved process which seemingly should be a simple procedure. I'm going to investigate switching to another backup program.
Thanks again for your help.
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David, the creation process for the WinPE version of the Rescue Media is fairly simple once you have got the Windows 10 ADK files installed (which is a one-off action).
When installing the ADK, only the top 3 options from the panel shown are needed, the rest of the ADK options are not needed. If you select the option for the WinPE version in the Acronis Rescue Media Builder tool, then you will be taken to the Microsoft web site to download the ADK installer.
Please note that from ATI 2018, Acronis has changed to building WinPE rescue media by default, using the Windows Recovery Environment where possible. Most other backup programs also use WinPE media too.
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