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Bootable Media Results in Blank Screen?

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I recentlty purchased Acronis True Image 2017, I have downloaded the bootable media ISO, and burned it to a CD. However when the CD is read at boot, it results in a blank screen, then after some time it loads the OS from the HDD. Other bootable CDs I have work just fine, but Acronis is not showing me anything on screen.

I have tried different ports on my video card, HDMI vs DisplayPort and I have even tried having only one monitor plugged in at a time. But nothing seems to help.

My video card is a Sapphire Radeon NITRO R9 Fury 4GB HBM, are there any known issue with this card?

 

P.S. Note that I tried my older Acronis 2012 Bootable Media with the same results.

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John,

The bootable media is capable of booting UEFI and/or legacy mode, but some bios restrict to legacy and if legacy is not enabled, will just ignore it - this is a lot more common with some DVD/CD players, but does not effect USB flash drives. Additionally, if the system has dual video cards (CPU and dedicated) and is not set to one specifically, this can cause an issue as the default media is Linux-based and Linux does not work well with auto-switching graphics (like Nvidia Optimus or whatever AMD's version of this is).

1) Check your bios to make sure it specifically lists only the Radeon card for the graphics and is not set to "auto" or something like Optimus (that is Nvidia's version of the auto switchign graphics.. not sure what AMD's is)

2) Ditch the .iso.  Acronis has a built in rescue media builder tool in the app.  Use it to build rescue media directly to your USB flash drive instead of using 3rd party tools . I think you'll appreciate the USB flash drive over the .iso (CD/DVD) anyway as it is faster and more convenient - 1GB is all you need, but 3.0 flash drives are so cheap these days, you should be able to get a decent 8gb or 16gb drive for roughly $5 if you don't already have one.

3) You can also go with WinPE rescue media instead which of course is Windows based.  If you download and install the Windows 10 ADK 1511 (you can use it on Win 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 - install the top 3 items which is roughly 3.4Gb... so it's kind of big, but really useful), you can then build WinPE rescue media which has better out of the box driver support (all the default drivers of a fresh Win10 install).  

Not only that, but we MVP's also developed a simple .bat script that allows you to build the ADK and inject additional drivers (in case you want to add specific drivers for this card for even better compatibility).  Check out the sticky:  https://forum.acronis.com/forum/127281

 

My motherboard, GigaByte Z68X-UD7-B3, does not have integrated graphics, and my display initialization in the BIOS is set to the appropriate PCI-Express port.

I will try to build and use the recovery media via USB, and let you know the results (I'll try the standard setup first, followed by the WinPE if necessary).

 

John, please see webpage: Check if your PC uses UEFI or BIOS to determine what boot mode is used on your system for the Windows OS - you will need to start the Acronis Rescue Media (on CD/DVD or USB stick) in the same mode too.

Keep us posted.

What is your CPU - you sure it doesn't have integrated graphics (3770 or 2600 have an integrated HD3000)?  If so, you want to make sure the bios is not set to auto for the graphics and is listed for one or the other specifically.  You might even try seeing if pointing to the embedded graphics just for the purpose of using the bootable media - to see if that helps at all.

Also... 

Does your system have secure boot enabled?  If the issue still exists with the default Linux media (once burned to a usb flash drive), try disabling secure boot in the bios temporarily, save and try again.

And, if your bios is legacy/CSM capable, use F12 after a "reboot" (not a shutdown) to specifically pick the USB boot mode of legacy or UEFI to match your OS is installed.

I had a Gigabyte GX77X-UD3 and it was super flakey with booting portable media - especially if the system did not do so from a cold boot or if a restart wasn't used (if using Windows 10, this was worsened with Windows 10 fastboot making the system hibernate and not really shutting down so I disabled hibernation completely and that helped a lot, but not always.)  

I upgraded to a Gigabyte Z170x-Gaming3 a few months ago thinking I'd be past those old issues, but found they still existed on the new board too!  It wasn't until just last week I found that Gigabyte released a bios update (took me from F6e to F20c beta - I think they're trying to standardize now) and this is the first time in nearly 5 years a Gigabyte board has dealt with bootable media and provided reliability with changing of physical bootable media, for me.)  Unfortunately, doesn't look your system has had a bios update since 2012 - 

F10 1.79 MB 2012/02/20

John, thanks for feeding back, glad to hear the USB media worked for you.