Acronis Bootable Rescue Media - Fail
Hi,
This is my first post here but I have been using Acronis for many years. So here is my sad story (short).
I recently upgraded to ATI 2019 and one of the first things I did was to create a new Acronis Bootable Media. I chose to use a DVD as that is what I was used to using in the past. I followed the directions and chose 'simple' and 'iso'. A few seconds later I had my finished Acronis bootable media (or so I thought). I of course wanted to test it to ensure it worked correctly so put it in the CD drive and restarted my computer and chose to boot from the CD drive.
Next thing that happened is that the screen when black with the dreaded blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner. Nothing else. After waiting several minutes, I assumed it failed and now it was time to reboot back into windows. Ha. Not so fast. I had to do a hard reset, and when the computer rebooted it showed the BIOS screen header, and the pointer, but nothing else. I could move the cursor with my mouse but if I clicked anywhere, it froze. That's it. Reboot, same thing. I was in a bit of a panic. I could not get into the bios at start up and could not boot into windows.
Finally, I suspected that the bios header screen had more on it but it just wasn't showing, so I shut down, disconnected my graphics card, and plugged my monitor into my integrated graphics port. Reboot and viola, the bios header now had a graphic box with buttons corresponding to different choices of how to boot (i.e., boot menu). I forget exactly what they were but I chose one and was back to windows in a few minutes.
However, now I still have the problem of not having a working boot rescue media. I've contacted customer support but they have not really been too helpful. They had only to recommend disabling secure boot, which was already disabled.
Thanks,
Bill
Hmmm, not entirely sure now. Thought that was the sequence. I could do it again tonight and confirm.
But I'd still be in the same situation, which is I am now very concerned about testing the recovery boot media. Is there a better way to test it without exposing my computer to possible issues?
Yes. After you create the media hold down the shift key on your keyboard, then right mouse click on the Windows Start button and select Restart. A screen shall appear that gives you options of what you want to restart to. In that list you should see an option for your bootable media.
I would think that your PC boots via UEFI, if so then select the bootable media option that has UEFI in the option.
If this fails your PC should simply boot back into Windows without any user intervention.
OK, this time I used a flash drive and created the media using that and it worked. Thanks guys
The first time I created it on dvd. I was trying to recite the order from memory and got it mixed up. I did choose cd/dvd and it created the media successfully. I checked its contents vs what was on the flash drive and it appears to contain same files/folders. Don't know why one worked while the other borked but at least I have a working recovery media now :)
Another funny thing. After successfully creating and testing the emergency recovery media (32GB Sandisk flash drive), I attempted same with a 4GB PNY flash drive. It created OK, but when I went to test it, the computer doesn't see it. I mean when I shift-restart it does not appear as a choice (but the Sandisk did). Both flash drives I reformatted just before creating the media. Wonder why? The recovery files only take up less than a GB of file space so I was hoping to use the smaller flash drive. Oh well.
Bill,
If the 4GB drive previously held data I have found that the formatting performed by windows is inadequate in cleaning all formatting of the drive which will cause the behavior you describe. If you are familiar with Windows diskpart run from a command prompt you can run the Clean command to remove all formatting then format and run the media creation on it. It should work, it always does for me. :)
Cool, I'll give it a shot tonight. Not familiar with that windows tool but I'm game. I'd be nice to put the emergency recovery media on the smaller flash drive and use the 32GB for more useful tasks. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks again.
The steps below outline the diskpart commands to make a USB key bootable.
Make a USB key bootable
This example applies to Windows Vista and Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10. Windows XP does not support using Diskpart on flash drives. Open a command prompt with administrator rights and enter the following sequence of commands:
- diskpart
- list disk
- select disk {number}
- clean
- create partition primary
- select partition 1
- active
- format fs=fat32 quick
- assign
- exit
In the "select disk" command, replace {number} with the drive number of your USB drive. This number will correspond to the Disk number displayed in Disk Management console. Take care to choose the correct number since this procedure erases everything on the drive you select. Selecting the wrong drive, well, you get the point!
The format command given above will create a FAT32 file system. This creates a bootable USB key that can be used for many purposes, once appropriate files are added. Run the Media Builder tool on the drive after the above to create your bootable media.