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My BIOS won't see my Acronis Universal Restore key

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Hello

I made a full backup of my old PC with Acronis True Image 2020, and I created an Acronis Universal Restore USB stick to start my new laptop and make the transfer (the hardware being different, the restoration apparently can't be done on Windows 10)

But BIOS DOESN'T SEE my USB stick !!! There is only the Windows Boot Manager in the start list. I deleted the Secure Boot, activated F12, nothing helps.

Thanks for your help, I can't use my new PC, and it's unbearable!

Kind regards

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Jean-Claude, sorry but much more information is needed here to understand what you are doing and what is or is not possible?

What OS was on your old PC and what type of disk drives did it have?

What OS was delivered with your new PC and what disk drives does it have?

How do the old and new PC's boot from the BIOS?
Are they both booting using UEFI / GPT or is one of them using Legacy / MBR to boot?

Have you created the normal 'Simple' version of the Acronis Rescue Media which is built using Windows PE?

Acronis Universal Restore is not used to transfer data, only to help prepare the migrated OS to work with new hardware found in the target system (after it has been restored using the normal Acronis rescue media).

If your old PC has Windows 10 and your new PC came activated for the same edition of Windows 10, then AUR may not be needed due to improved hardware detection now in the OS.

If your new PC has PCIe / NVMe M.2 type drives, then it normally requires using UEFI / GPT to support these drives, so they will not be recognised if booting in Legacy mode.

Hello Steve, thanks a lot for this quick and precise answer !

Old and new PC are on Windows 10 64 bits
Old one has a 1Tb SSD for C: ; the new one has a 512 Gb nvme M.2 SSD for C: and a 1 Tb HDD for D:
Both are booting using UEFI / GPT

"Have you created the normal 'Simple' version of the Acronis Rescue Media which is built using Windows PE?" Yes, I think so

"Acronis Universal Restore is not used to transfer data, only to help prepare the migrated OS to work with new hardware found in the target system (after it has been restored using the normal Acronis rescue media)." I'm not sure to understand clearly your point

Kind regards

 

Jean-Claude, thanks for the further information.

Do both your PC's have the same edition of Windows 10, i.e. are both Home or both Pro?
This affects whether you will be able to use the old Win 10 on the new PC.

Migrating from a standard SATA SSD to a NVMe M.2 drive is more complicated than just doing a simple restore from the old PC because different device drivers and BIOS settings are involved.

If both PC's still have working copies of Windows 10 running, then please make full disk backup images of both of them before you attempt to go further!  This will give you the opportunity to go back to the starting point if this migration doesn't work.

Next, I would recommend creating the ATI 2020 'Simple' Rescue Media on the new PC where it can pick up support for the hardware devices installed in that new PC, especially as this is where you will be booting that rescue media too.  This will mean either having 2 licenses for ATI 2020 (one per PC) or else moving the license from the old PC to the new PC in order to create the rescue media.

See KB 62744: Acronis True Image 2020 (Windows): "You've exceeded the maximum number of activations for this serial number" - for moving your license to the new computer.

See KB 63226: Acronis True Image 2020: how to create bootable media

KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

Once you have done the above, then the steps I would recommend are:

Shutdown the new PC fully by pressing / holding the Shift key while clicking on Shutdown - this is to avoid Windows using hybrid sleep mode (aka hibernation) because of having Fast Start enabled.

Boot the new PC from the ATI 2020 Simple rescue media in UEFI mode with your backup drive containing the full disk backup from the old PC connected.

Check that you can see all the disk drives in the ATI 2020 offline application and that you know which drive is which!  You can check this by starting a new Disk Backup and looking at the drives shown in the panels to confirm they are showing correctly, then cancelling the backup.

If all is looking as you need to see it, then do a Disk level Recovery of your backup from the old PC to the new PC NVMe M.2 SSD.

Please see forum topic: [How to] recover an entire disk backup - and in particular the attached PDF document which shows a step-by-step tutorial for doing this type of recovery / restore.

When the recovery is complete & successful, check the Logs in the offline application to ensure that there were no hidden or missed messages.  These logs disappear when you reboot out of the rescue media so this is the only time you can do this!

If all is still looking good, then shutdown the computer by closing the ATI application then turning off when the screen goes back to a black screen for the BIOS start panels.  Remove the rescue media and the external backup drive.

Next, attempt to boot normally into Windows from the recovered drive before considering if the Acronis Universal Restore media is needed to be used.  Windows 10 can normally handle most hardware changes automatically without needing AUR.

If the computer doesn't boot into Windows, then you will need to check the BIOS settings to ensure that you have the 'Windows Boot Manager' from the NVMe M.2 SSD selected as the main boot priority device.

Note: I am assuming that the new PC D: 1TB HDD is just used for Data and not for the OS etc. It is normally recommended to remove or disconnect any additional disk drives to avoid them being selected during the recovery process.

Dear Steve,

Many thanks for all the efforts you've done to help me.
But it seems sooooooo complicated that I finally choose another path : install a fresh Windows 10 on the new PC, copy all the documents and images from the old PC to an external HDD, then transfer those data on the new PC, and finally download and install all the missing software.

It was a bit long, but less than all the time I turned crazy trying to use Acronis.
Anyway, it's clear for me that Acronis' statement about the ability of transferring saved data on a different computer is a false promise !

Thanks again for your help, and take care

Kind regards
JC