PC cannot boot to ANY USB after restoring with Acronis Rescue Media
Hi,
I see this happening on 2 different PCs - all Intel NUCs.
I have several NUCs running all based on a single image, that I maintain. I have used Acronis Rescue Media to backup and restore this image to different PCs.
Suddenly I see this twice on different units.
1) Boot from USB (Acronis Rescue Media)
2) Initialise disk
3) Restore Windows 10 image (previously backed up using the same Acronis Rescue Media)
I have done 1-3 many many times w/o problems. Now this:
4) After completion - PC restart and F10 to Boot menu. Acronis USB (Uefi) is on the list. However it will not boot - it stays on the boot screen when trying.
5) Checking other USB boot disks - e.g. Windows install and others. Same scenario.
6) In the bios the USB is identified as boot disk
It is almost as if Acronis has destroyed something.
Does anyone have any good suggestions ? I am stuck. Looking forward to your replies :-)
PS
Secure Boot disabled.
I have tried with and w/o legacy boot enabled.
USB disk is GPT and done with Rufus.
/Jan


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Hi thanks for replying.
Yea I tried the other options in Rufus to no effect
The really strange thing is that I have booted the NUCs so many times on this particular Acronis Rescue Media USB and done Backups and Recoveries without issues.
Suddenly I get a reproducible scenario, that I can boot up on the USB, do a recover with an updated Windows 10 image, and after that I cannot boot to the very same USB, that did not even leave the USP port on the machine.
Can something on the Windows image casuse this? I seems to have happened after latest Win 10 updates here start 2019.
Additional info: I tried to disconnect/reconnect the CMOS battery to no effect as well. I have burned the latest BIOS for the device. Running out of ideas.
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Jan, the only reason I can think of that could cause any strange problem would be if the restore invoked the Acronis Universal Restore utility and replaced device drivers with generic Windows equivalent drivers, but that is unlikely.
Does your USB rescue media boot up on any other computer you have access to?
There should be no need to use Rufus to create a bootable USB stick unless you are defaulting to using the older Linux based ISO downloaded from your Acronis account.
The ATI 2018 Rescue Media builder tool is more than capable of directly creating both Linux based and WinPE versions of the rescue media on any acceptible USB stick.
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Steve, thanks.
Yes the USB rescue media boots up fine on the other machines just not for these two. I have a fear that if I repeat on a third machine I will render it in the same state. I may try.
As mentioned, the same USB drive was used to do the Acronis recovery/restore of Win 10 (to an updated version of Win 10) - the USB drive was left in the machine - only after the restore it recognises the USB drive but will not boot to it. It stays at the boot screen. So the only change is the actual Acronis operation of doing the restore.
The restored Windows boots fine from the SSD.
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Today I compared two identical NUCs.
A: Will no longer boot on USB Rescue Recovery media after Acronis Restore
B: Does boot on USB Rescue Recovery media (the same one as A.
Bios: Same version. Same settings. However they do see the SATA and USB drives differently. Both see the UEFI USB.
Swapping the SSD does not change the issue nor swapping RAM.
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Jan, this problem has me stumped as there should be no reason why the rescue media or other USB boot media wouldn't work here. All I can suggest at this point would be to either upgrade to ATI 2019 which will give you access to Acronis Support, or else consider using the Acronis Pay per Incident service to have this issue investigated for your ATI 2018 media.
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Thanks for your help anyway, I know this is a really strange one... I actually have three NUCs exhibiting this behaviour. Yesterday I created a new Rescue Media USB on a different stick. Then I booted to one of my NUCs - restored an older image successfully - and the NUC is still fine (i.e. it boots on USB as before). So some success there, even though it may be a coincidence.....
I wonder If either the image that I restored previously or the USB recovery media that I used could have had some error on it, causing the restore to destroy stuff in the NUC BIOS or whatever..... ? Would this even be possible ?
I will update to current Acronis and get in touch with support. If this doesn't fly I will try Intel support. After all - I am not alone with this type of issue: https://forums.intel.com/s/question/0D50P0000490PTaSAM/nuc-dc53427hye-w…
Thanks again - appreciate you trying to help. I will post an update if I find a solution / reason.
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Jan, thanks for the update. I find it hard to believe that doing an OS restore would have any impact whatsoever on the NUC BIOS - that is all stored in firmware which needs a special utility in order to make changes such as flashing to a new version, and all the data in the backup comes only from your hard disk drive that was backed up.
Given your USB rescue media works OK on other computers and NUC's, that would suggest there is no issue with the boot media itself, so again this is pointing towards a BIOS issue (as supported by the Intel forum link for similar issues from 2014).
The only further thought here would be to ensure you have done a complete cold start of the NUC, i.e. disconnected all power, pressed the power button to drain any residual charge held within the internal circuits or capacitors, removed any CMOS battery then let the box stand for a few minutes before starting up again, including resetting any BIOS date/time values etc if lost by this process.
It should be possible to reduce the NUC to a minimal configuration with no actual disk drive and still be able to boot from removable media (CD/DVD or USB stick) - you would need an external optical drive if going that path.
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