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Unable to Create Usable Recovery Media

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Using ATI 2020 on Windows 10 (with latest updates), I have been unable to get any form of Acronis Recovery Media to work.

1.  I tried the Survival kit - it creates the partition on the backup drive, and copies files, but when I try to boot from it, i get a black screen with the Dell logo and the circle of moving dots. After waiting several minutes, nothing further happens.

2. I tried the Rescue Media Builder in Simple mode - it creates the recovery medium on a USB  drive, but with the same boot result as 1. above.

3. I tried using the Rescue Media Builder in Advanced mode with Linux-based media - same result.

Note: my Windows installation is booting via UEFI, but I didn't see a setting for this in the  Advanced mode settings.

I was able to boot the machine from a USB stick with GParted Live, so I know that it will boot from a USB drive.

 

 

 

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Philip, there are several suggestions to offer here:

  1. Try waiting a little longer to allow time for the rescue media to load into memory and progress further.  This can take more than 5 minutes depending on the PC hardware etc.
     
  2. If your Dell PC has dual graphics adapters, try temporarily disabling the higher resolution adapter in the BIOS settings.  There have been known issues for PC's using dual graphics adapters.
     
  3. Create a Windows 10 repair media or install media and test booting from this to confirm that this issue only applies to the ATI rescue media.

Thanks Steve.

I tried your first suggestion - I waited 20 minutes - still no boot.

The PC does have an integrated adapter on the motherboard, but it was already disabled in the BIOS.

I was able to boot the PC from a Windows repair/install USB stick.

 

Phillip,

Are you on Windows 10 20H2?  I have discovered that some PC's fail to boot media devices after update to 20H2 in a traditional method when using UEFI.  If this is the case for you it will be necessary to setup booting to the created media using Windows 10 Recovery.

Go to  Settings - Update and Security - Recovery, look for Advanced startup and click on Restart now.  Once the next screen appears select Use a Device - then either USB device which should then show you the bootable media or Hard disk in which case your PC will restart and then will boot the media.

Philip, I would suggest that the next step would be to identify the exact graphics device and drivers that your PC is using, then inject these into the rescue media.

The easiest method of extracting the driver files is to use a utility tool such as Double Driver to do this then select the folder for the extracted files in the Rescue Media Builder tool using the Advanced > Windows PE option.

 

 

I just tried creating Recovery Media using Advanced-> Windows RE and loaded the non-Microsoft drivers. When I restarted, I got the same result. I also tried booting the Recovery USB stick using Windows Recovery as you mentioned in an earlier post with the same result.

 

Does the Rescue Media Builder automatically select UEFI/Legacy mode when setting up the bootable image?

 

Success! I just created the Rescue Media using the PE option and inserting the drivers and it worked. I was able to boot from a USB stick.

In all of this, my original goal was to replace the main HDD with an SSD, but I'm glad I tested the recovery first! In an earlier post, I mentioned that I was having trouble with a full disk backup. We determined that the 2 (almost-full) hidden Windows Recovery partitions were causing the backup to hang. Any suggestions on what I can do make a full disk backup work?

I think one of the hidden partitions is for Windows 8, which originally came on this PC, the other is for Windows 10. I'm now wondering if the RE option above was getting the wrong recovery image.

Thanks for all your help!