Reboot Required

Lee, sorry but I have never seen the Acronis boot media tell me that a reboot is required when I have used it, and the check for an existing Windows installation only applies to the Acronis Active Clone feature as far as I am aware.

I would suspect that you have booted into the Acronis Rescue Media from a computer that was not shutdown fully first, and therefore the reboot is required because you are effectively in a hybrid sleep state, which would cause issues with any clone operation!

You should either use Windows Restart to boot into the Rescue Media, or else press & hold the Shift key when clicking on Shutdown to ensure you are doing a full shutdown before booting the media.

Never seen it in rescue media either.  I'd try Steve's suggestion too. You'll need to launch your regular Windows OS first and then do a full shutdown.

I hate the impact of Windows 10 fast startup on backup and partitioning programs.  Although, I do appreciate Microsoft attempting to speed up boot times, fast start (which uses a hibernation file and "locks the disk" to protect it) makes it appear you are shutting down, but not really aren't. 

For reference, here are a couple of forum threads about fastboot / fast start - just to give you an idea.  If you have an SSD, you're not getting much additional boot time performance from fast boot anyway.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance/win10-fast-start-up-quick-boot-warning-suggestion/5fec376c-d876-4033-85f6-32c2d2cb5e03 

https://superuser.com/questions/1231582/hdd-with-windows-boot-locked-because-of-hibernation-flag

Lee, I have been experiencing the same issue and have so far not found a solution to it.  It seems there have been several changes made between 2016 and 2019 as my imaging process is now much longer than it use to be. I use to be able to image as many HDDs as needed without a reboot, simply remove one HDD and plug in another with the machine still running.  However, with 2019 I have to reboot after every image.  Even then, I run into various issues such as the program locking up or my recovery drive suddenly not appearing and being unable to select and image.  If anyone has some insight as to how to resolve these issues that would be great.  I regret upgrading to 2019.

Bryan, what exactly are you doing here?  ATI is intended as an application primarily for the home user (or small business), but if you are using it to image 'as many HDD's as needed', that sounds like you are using it to deploy multiple PC's from a single source image, for which the Acronis Snap Deploy product might be better suited?

If we can understand how you are using ATI, the steps being taken, how drives are connected etc, then it may be possible to test this to see if we see the same issues?  This is not something that I have seen in my own use of the product.

One key difference with ATI 2018 & 2019 is the move away from defaulting to creating Linux based rescue media to using Windows PE media instead, where this is taken from the Windows Recovery Environment on the computer where the media is created.

There is still an option via the Advanced button in the rescue media builder tool to create the older Linux based media, so would recommend doing so and seeing if that gives you back the behaviour you had with ATI 2016?

Thanks, I will try that.  May also try https://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/.  Anybody try this?  I need unattended boot media restore.  Hopefully the WinPE will do that.  Been using Acronis for 11 years... don't like the new changes.

Thanks for your help.

Bryan Russell:  I hear you!  Exactly my scenario!  Acronis 2016 and older works great, no problems.  I'll let you know what I think of Casper.

Steve Smith:  I watched the video on Acronis Snap Deploy. It looks like an excellent solution for networked systems.  My scenario is that I have laptops in operating rooms all across the nation (none are networked or attached to the internet).  If one blows up, its shipped back to me, I blast the new image on it, and ship it back.  For security reasons, none of these laptops will ever touch the internet.  With Acronis 2016, this process is easy (I used to do this with Norton Ghost; showing my age).  Acronis 2019 complicates things.  I will try the 2019 WinPE & Casper, but will use Acronis 2016 until I get a resolution.  Thanks again!

Steve: We are currently using the Linux based Bootable Rescue Device method to image new drives.  My company has been using Acronis 2016 for years to image our HDDs on end user terminals.  The terminals are spread across the country and are not connected to the Internet. Rather than spending time in front of the terminal itself to image a drive, we image them all at the office and simply perform a swap when onsite.  The only issue I've ran into while imaging new drives is that we have to reboot after each one.  If you remove a drive and plug in another while the machine is still on for some reason the new drive will register as having data on it and the program freezes.  This isn't a huge deal but adds an additional minute or two to our imaging process.  We did not have this issue with 2016.

The second issue which relates to Lee's initial post happens when we try to re-image a drive that already has data on it.  We are in the process of upgrading our machines from Windows 7 to Windows 10.  Our process is exactly the same as before.  Image several drives with our Win 10 setup and simply swap them onsite.  To save money, we then bring all of the Win 7 drives back to office to re-image.  Any time I attempt to re-image a drive with Win 7 on it I run into the Reboot Required message and the program freezes.  Since we are running Acronis straight from a bootable rescue media there is no way to "reboot" the system other than manually powering it off and back on.  This doesn't seem to fix the problem and I still get the Reboot Required message.  As of right now I see no way to re-image these drives in 2019.

I will create a bootable device with WinPE to see if that fixes the issues.

Bryan & Lee, thank you for the further information.

Can I seek a further clarification please:  when you speak of re-imaging a drive, which particular method are you using?  Are you using Recovery to restore a backup .tib image file contents to your drive, or are you using Clone?

All activities performed from the Acronis bootable Rescue Media are manual but I understand that delays by needing to force power off then reboot the computer being used to this re-image process would be frustrating!

I would recommend taking a look at the MVP Custom ATIPE Builder script tool for using in your re-imaging scenario - this is WinPE based and can be combined with a large external USB HDD drive holding your backup .tib image files (if using Recovery), so as to booting the media from the HDD instead of a USB stick.  But the key advantage of the MVP version of the media is that it does have a 'desktop' type environment and has options to Shutdown or Restart, plus has a File Explorer and other tools included.

The above image is from when I had ATI 2018 on the MVP Custom media but gives a good idea of the options being offered.

To use this on an external HDD drive, create a small 2GB FAT32 partition at the start of the HDD using a partition manager tool such as MiniTool Partition Wizard, then give that FAT32 partition a drive letter, i.e. S:  then run the MVP tool and give the same drive letter when asked if you want to create a bootable USB drive.

I expect you'll see the same behavior with winpe on the reboots. When Acronis sees that an image with an OS is already on the a disk intended for the destination, it wants to reboot to ensure the drive is not locked by a fastboot or an existing hibernation file. 

It would be pertinent to do a quick format of the drive first if the existing image is going to replace what's on the disk anyway or use the add new disk option in the he rescue media to initialize it and then deploy the image.

The clone function in TI 2019 is now requesting that I restart the laptop, this just started last week. Prior to that I've been cloning my "C" drive SSD to a usb SSD weekly without having to restart windows. .After reading this topic I attempted a clone today and TI required a restart to clone. I then used disk part to clean the usb drive, closed and restarted the TI 2019 program, and  TI is still requiring a restart. Not having to restart to clone was my prime reason for upgrading to 2019, not pleased about this.

William, I'd agree. There must be something triggering the need for restart though. I just did 2 online clones within the last two weks, both using ATI 2019 to two different PCIe NVMe drives in the same USB 3.1 sabrent enclosure and no reboot was needed.

Have you checked the logs to see if anything jumps out? 

Have you tried a full shutdown and start on the OS drive too? Try a sit-down /p to force the clearing of any fastboot / hibernation triggers on the main drive too.

Hi Steve, thanks for the reply.  Here is my process:

1.  Create a perfect laptop that has Win10 Pro and custom software ready to go (this is the Master);

2.  Buy laptops that have Win10 Pro preinstalled and activated (so they are in MSFT's activation database);

3.  Using Acronis TI linux boot media, I clone that perfect computer (Master) to a USB passport drive;

4.  Then start an assembly line of computers (from step #2) and clone each one to be identical to the Master in step #1 (MSFT keeps the activation linked to the mobo, so once booted up, I briefly connect to the internet to activate);

5.  I then ship the new laptop.  If it blows up for any reason, I just re-clone it from the Master.  All laptops have identical hardware.

I have been using this process with Acronis TI for 11 years.  However, now with ATI 2019, the process is broken.  And I don't understand why.  If ATI 2016 still works, why is it broken in 2019?  I will just continue to use 2016 (unless Casper is better) and we won't upgrade Acronis anymore...waste of money.  Too bad.  I liked ATI.

What is MVP Custom ATIPE Builder script tool that you talked about?

Thanks again for your help!  I know you're a volunteer.  Too bad Acronis doesn't really listen to its customers.  I have called and emailed them about this, and they really have no idea what I'm talking about.

Steve/Bobo, just to be clear, the Reboot Required message pops up when trying to Add New Disk on a used drive.  After going through the options and selecting Initialize in MBR it pops up the progress screen but the bar never progresses. This is where we are seeing the Reboot Required message. If you try to close it or cancel out the program locks up.  I'll take a look at some of our other options but I think for the way my company operates it would be preferable to find a fix within ATI as opposed to changing the software we all use.

Thanks for taking the time to help us.

Additionally, can anyone tell me if it's possible to downgrade back to 2016? (I'm traveling at the moment and can't try myself).  It's a long story but the whole reason we upgraded to 2019 is because the person who previously held the Acronis licenses left the company and took his machine with him.  We had to purchase new licenses and someone made the call to go with 2019.  It was clearly the wrong call, but if it's possible to downgrade all of our machines without having to purchase more licenses that may solve our problem.

Bryan Russell wrote:

Steve/Bobo, just to be clear, the Reboot Required message pops up when trying to Add New Disk on a used drive.  After going through the options and selecting Initialize in MBR it pops up the progress screen but the bar never progresses. This is where we are seeing the Reboot Required message. If you try to close it or cancel out the program locks up.  I'll take a look at some of our other options but I think for the way my company operates it would be preferable to find a fix within ATI as opposed to changing the software we all use.

 

Thanks for taking the time to help us.

 

Is this in Windows or rescue media? If windows, just use disk management to initialize or format instead of add new disk from Acronis. Then to the restore in Acronis.

I wonder if the issue is that the system in use is uefi/gpt but the disk being asked to format in legacy MBR and some process check in 2019 is forcing a reboot because of the difference.

Regardless, I'd format with Windows disk management in windows and only use initialize disk option in Acronis from rescue media. 

I know it wouldn't fix the issue but would be an easy workaround if this is a bug in Acronis 2019 logic that is causing this rebooy. I don't use add new disk in Acronis from Windows but will see if I can replucate and post back.

Lee, see forum topic: MVP Tool - CUSTOM ATI WINPE BUILDER - also link in my signature.

Thanks for the information on your process of cloning.  The only potential concern is to ensure that you are booting the rescue media in the same BIOS mode as used by Windows 10 Pro to avoid any issue of migrating between MBR and GPT).

See KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media - for more information.

Bryan, wiping the used drive before attempting to reuse it should stop some of the issues here and could be done in Windows easily.  Not sure about your reference of initialising the drive in MBR as this suggests that you may be using a UEFI Boot system but cloning / imaging Legacy / MBR drives?  Acronis will give a warning in such cases in case this is being done unintentionally?

There is no option to downgrade your ATI 2019 license to ATI 2016 as far as I am aware, and if the previous version(s) of ATI were licensed to an individual who has since left the company, then you would have no access to downloading a copy of the older version that would be available in their Acronis account.

Bryan Russell wrote:

Additionally, can anyone tell me if it's possible to downgrade back to 2016? (I'm traveling at the moment and can't try myself).  It's a long story but the whole reason we upgraded to 2019 is because the person who previously held the Acronis licenses left the company and took his machine with him.  We had to purchase new licenses and someone made the call to go with 2019.  It was clearly the wrong call, but if it's possible to downgrade all of our machines without having to purchase more licenses that may solve our problem.

I don't believe so. 2019 should work too, you're one of the few I've heard who wants to actually go back to any if the versions after 2014. You'd have to contact support directly and see if they can help though if you really aren't happy with 2019. 

For now, if you could test using disk management to format and then deploy, that would be helpful. Also verify if the system OS is legacy or UEFI and if it's uefi, if you use the Acronis to add new disk as GPT instead of MBR prevents a reboot or not.

I'm going to test too.

Bobbo, this is using Rescue Media.  Our setup is basically a Dell 3050 PC with the cover off to expose the HDD.  Boot from USB and run ATI Rescue Media, Create New Disk, Recover Disk from Image.  Remove the HDD with the PC still powered on and insert new HDD.  Rinse and repeat.  Not the most efficient method but it works for our company.  The 3050 is the same PC we use at end user terminals so our imaging station doubles as a training station.  

Unfortunately with our setup I can't erase the disk with Disk Management as we don't have a machine setup in office with that capability.  Our machines only have a single HDD slot which is why we are imaging through rescue media.  We have attempted to Initialize with GPT but we get the same Reboot Required error.

I just did a dirty fast test with an external 16gb USB flash drive.  System is Win10 x64 in gpt/uefi mode.

Used Acronis 2019 14690 and clicked on tools >>> all tools

Which opened program data/.../tools and utilities

Right clicked on "add new disk" and used option that run as administrator.

Then proceeded to initialize as GPT = success

Repeated process and initialized as MBR = success.

I don't have a drive with an existing OS to also try this right now, but will later tonight. I want to run the same test on another computer with this flash drive and then on a blank external USB and then again on the same external USB in a disk that has an OS on it already.

In regards to Legacy/UEFI.  Our older Win 7 HDDs are all Legacy OS but we are imaging them with UEFI Win 10.  On ATI 2016 we would always Initialize MBR with no issues or warnings.  

Bryan, see the KB document I referenced in my earlier post.  You UEFI Win 10 computer should be capable of booting in Legacy / CSM mode and therefore you should be booting the ATI rescue media in that Legacy mode, not in UEFI mode, where Legacy mode expects the drive to be MBR as GPT is not supported in that mode.

Ok, sounds like I need to try rescue media too.

Also, FYI for some alternatives.

1) get a USB to SATA adapter so you can mount the second drive and use Windows or just to see if Acronis 2019 behaves better from usb vs the internal SATA port. They are like $8 on Amazon and worth their weight in gold.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-2-5-Inch-Adapter-Optimized-EC-SSHD/dp/B011M8YACM/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=usb+to+sata&qid=1551909476&s=gateway&sr=8-3

2) is your rescue media the default Linux or winpe or WinRE? Build the WinRE version if you haven't. See if it does better. If not, you can close ATI in it, and use command prompt to run diskpart and format it. Then launch Acronis and restore.

3) if your just pushing images to these drives, you don't have to initialize or add new disk first. Just deploy the image and it will partition and do it's thing.

And, if you try the rescue media with winpe or WinRE, I suggest building with the MVP tool. The GUI is way more user friendly and has some nice tools built in too.

Steve, I have tried booting the the rescue media in Legacy Mode, UEFI Mode, 32-bit, 64-bit, and tried Adding New Disk in MBR and GPT on all options.  I run into the Reboot Required message on all attempts.

Steve Smith wrote:

Bryan, see the KB document I referenced in my earlier post.  You UEFI Win 10 computer should be capable of booting in Legacy / CSM mode and therefore you should be booting the ATI rescue media in that Legacy mode, not in UEFI mode, where Legacy mode expects the drive to be MBR as GPT is not supported in that mode.

Ditto to this too! Use F12 at reboot to boot the Dell one time boot menu and make sure your selecting the legacy boot option for the rescue media if you are initializing legacy disks. Can't hurt, might help. 

Bryan, given your MBR drive requirements, forget about booting in UEFI mode.  Keep with Legacy mode, choose the 64-bit ATI version given your computer is 64-bit, and then when you see an error, please try to access the Log messages via the Log option shown in the ATI panel - this may give some more information about why it thinks a reboot is required?

The Log data can be saved if you click on the top line in the right panel showing the date/time.

Bobbo,

1) I've been trying to get approval for additional equipment and something this cheap might be just what we need.

2) I've tried to image a used drive without clearing it first but it's grayed out on the selection menu.

3) The Rescue Media is the Linux based version.  When I get back tonight I'll try the Win versions and see if they are any better.

Bryan, I hope they let you splurge on it, for the price efficiency will go way up. Those will power an SSD or laptop spinners but not a full desktop size drive. They make external USB docks that can hold any size drive for less than $40 too.

This is the one I use at home. It's a standalone cloner and/or dual external dock that supports SATA disks

https://www.amazon.com/Inateck-Dual-Bay-Docking-Station-Function/dp/B075SW1W4J/ref=mp_s_a_1_11?keywords=usb%2Bto%2Bsata%2Bclone&qid=1551910270&s=gateway&sr=8-11&th=1&psc=1

Just a note on the link above, that one goes straight to a USB C version, but they have a cheaper USB 3.0 version which is the one I have. There are tons of different brands and options - most around $40. I've had good success with Inatek and sabrent products.

That said, if you do get a clone dock, not all are created equal and we've heard of some of the offline cloning devices corrupting the source drives when using the standalone clone functions. Never seen that in our IT shop or at my house, but we stay away from the off brands too.

Steve, I would love nothing more than to access the Log to see what's happening but once the Reboot Required message appears you are locked out of doing anything else.

Bobbo, I'll see about getting a cloner like that in the office but for short term we'd still need to get 2019 working. 

Bryan Russell wrote:

Steve, I would love nothing more than to access the Log to see what's happening but once the Reboot Required message appears you are locked out of doing anything else.

 

Bobbo, I'll see about getting a cloner like that in the office but for short term we'd still need to get 2019 working. 

Roger that. I'm sure we'll be able to figure something out. I'm building Linux rescue media to test offline now too. 

Ok, I just used Linux recovery on 2 different systems. The first was an Asus T200 strictly UEFI x64 system (no legacy or CSM options in bios).

Using the same 16gb flash drive from before,  while Acronis rescue media was booted in uefi mode, I was able to successfully "add new disk" first to GPT mode and then to MBR mode, all in the same session and without rebooting.

I then repeated this on Dell latitude e6410 which is uefi x64 but has secure boot off and legacy CSM enabled.  I first booted the ATI linux rescue media in uefi mode with successful actions to add new disk as GPT and then MBR in the same session without any reboots prompted.

I then booted the rescue media in legacy mode  and selected 64-bit TrueTImage. I was also able to add new disk as GPT and then MBR without reboots prompted.

So all tests were successful. However there was no OS on the drive and this was from USB vs SATA so it's not one for one. I will try those when I have an OS disk to try with tonight.

One last thought, why not try to initialize as GPT instead of MBR? If that works, can you then restore? Or can you initialize as GPT to start without rebooting? If so, can you then try MBR when the disk is blank if that works?

I'm still confused why were wanting to initialize as MBR if the plan is to restore GPT win 10 as the goal. I know we don't want any extra reboots happening, but if the plan is to go to GPT...

Steve, I would love nothing more than to access the Log to see what's happening but once the Reboot Required message appears you are locked out of doing anything else.

Bryan, another advantage of using the MVP version of the boot media is that even if the ATI application locks up, assuming it is only that which is locked, then you can use the WinPE desktop to still access the log data. I have a small batch file that does this for me when needed with the one line:

copy X:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Logs D:\Capture

where D:\Capture is a location on my USB boot media and X: is the WinPE boot RAM drive.
Note: the logs are in XML data format.

NEW INFO:

Hi guys, just made it back and I'm about to start testing some things.  I decided to try the Acronis Disk Cleaner tool and I ran into some new errors as well as a partial success.  When attempting to clean the disk it only made it to about 10% before an error popped up, "Failed to write to sector 66.... of hard disk 1".  I clicked retry but got the same error, so I clicked ignore and a success message popped up.  I then attempted to Add New Disk and instead of getting the Reboot Required message I received the same Failed to write message.  Again I clicked Ignore and a success message popped up.  I just successfully imaged the HDD, albeit through the long process of trying to clean and waiting for the error to pop up.

I wonder if there is something in the Win 7 HDDs specifically that it is causing the problem.  All of these Win 7 HDDs were originally created in ATI 2016, and I was able to overwrite them with the Win 10 image in ATI 2016. But maybe creating a disk with ATI 2016 somehow makes it unreadable to ATI 2019.

I will first test creating a Win 10 image with ATI 2019 and then try to erase and write it again to see if I get the same errors.

It sounds to me like you have experienced disk corruption at some point in the past and that corruption was carried over into your deployed Win 7 HDD's so all (or some/most) have the same issue.

I would recommend that you run chkdsk on the the target drives prior to running the next clone and see if you still get the reboot issue.  I am fairly sure that sector 66 on disk would be in the MFT of the disk which I assume is formatted as NTFS.  It is likely that the error is related to data corruption rather than physical damage given what you report so, I would recommend that you run chkidsk /f on a target disk and once that finishes try the clone.

Your source disk likely introduced this corruption so if you are still using it I would do the same on it.

For more details on fixing corrupted disk look at the link below:

Fix Disk Corruption

This reboot required when add a new disk happening only on 2019 version, i used 2018 never seen it before......

Kelvin,

Please start a new thread for you issue.  This is an old thread so a new one will get more attention.