Help Please. True Image 2021 Stopped Loading.
I've been using True Image 2021 for some time with no problems and suddenly it decided to stop loading. When I try to start it the loading hour glass comes up for a few seconds then goes away, that's all. I know it is still active because my already backed up files will open just fine and I can still mount and use them. I just can't open the program to make new backups. I have tried removing and reinstalling the program many times with no luck. I still only get a few seconds of the loading hourglass and then nothing. Has anyone else had a similar issue, and if so has anyone found a resolution. I do routine backups and have to have a reliable program. Up to this point True Image has been that program and I am really at a loss as to why this has happened since there has been no change to my system.
Ron, if you have recently reinstalled True Image and you can afford to do it one more time, then I would highly recommend using the cleanup utility from Acronis. You can find it on the link below (along with instructions for its use). It is compatible with many versions of True Image, including 2021.
https://kb.acronis.com/aticleanup
1. Uninstall True Image
2. Run Cleanup Utility
3. Install True Image
Running the cleanup will require you to reboot the computer. The cleanup is removing some left over Windows registry keys (among other things) which mandates a reboot. But I would recommend you reboot it between each stage for good measure.
Side note: Steve, it's interesting to see that one of the first steps of "Method 1. Rebuild the Database folder" is to "Temporarily disable the self-protection feature of Acronis Active Protection." All the more reason not to have this in the first place.
Samir, it is necessary to disable AAP before attempting to rename or delete the Database folder as otherwise AAP will prevent this action!
Samir, it is necessary to disable AAP before attempting to rename or delete the Database folder as otherwise AAP will prevent this action!
Yes, I understand that. That's expected, and many security software products will exhibit the same or a similar behavior. But this adds complexity to the core backup product in this case which makes troubleshooting more difficult. I would much rather that it did not do that, and that the security layer be the responsibility of a different software (one from Acronis or a different vendor).
Ron, when did you first notice this problem?
Also, why do you need to open the program? What will you do there if or when it opens? I'm trying to understand the motive here and how you use True Image. Usually, using True Image starts with opening the program the first time, setting up a backup plan on schedule, then closing the program and not opening it again unless you want to recover something from a backup or set up a new backup plan, or to change the existing backup plan. You set it and you forget it, it keeps working and doing the backups automatically in the background.
If you know when this problem started to show, and you have not installed new programs or added new personal files to the Windows partition or disk, and you have a fresh backup that was created prior to that point in time, then you could use that backup to recover your whole Windows system (including True Image) to that point in time before this problem appeared. After all, it's for this kind of situations that backups are for (using True Image to recover True Image to a good working condition).
OK, I have reinstalled several times, and even tried installing an earlier version with the same results. I discovered ATI was running in the background, which does me no good if I need to schedule a new backup routine. I'm going to look at the KB articles but what I don't understand is why everything was working just fine and suddenly this happened. I'm beginning to suspect it has something to do with a Windows update but have no way to know for sure. Other folks got the same updates but don't seem to have the same issues. My system isn't Intel, so perhaps that plays a role; just don't know. I hate to have to find another backup solution after using ATI for so many years but if you can't access the interface it isn't much use to you.
Ron, I can assure you that Windows Update certainly has a way of messing up an entire system. Back in April I got an update from Windows Update that triggered a chain reaction that is still playing out till this day. It's the reason for my recent forum visits because I am still working on recovering from that single update.
I promise to keep this as short as possible, but I want to briefly describe how it went down. For starters, that update caused my PC to enter a vicious GSOD (green screen of death) loop cycle where it would crash, restart, crash, restart, crash, restart... you get the idea.
Then Windows would enter its "Automatic Repair" and allow me to enter the system after a two or three crashes (that's how long it takes for Windows to realize something is wrong), where I could finally uninstall that recent update and my PC was saved. But only for a short period, until Windows Update decided to check for updates again.
Once again, it downloaded that same update again, and again caused my PC to enter the GSOD crash and reboot cycle. I was starting to get the hang of it and playing this game very well. It kept installing that same update over and over again and crashing my PC on repeat, and I kept uninstalling it and fixing my PC that way. In the end, I escaped this madness by putting Windows Update on hold for 7 days (there's an option for that) because they made sure it's impossible to electively skip a bad update (only available in Windows corporate environment).
This repeated crashing caused the Windows Update process to fail on reboot (more than once) which resulted in unexpected power loss (again more than once) and left the Windows registry in a bad state (corrupted) which resulted in loss of audio in the system. It would say "No Audio Output Device available" even though Device Manager would list all the audio devices. I was never able to repair that... well... I did do it two or three times actually using System Restore points, but since Windows Update kept breaking it after I fixed it, and after a more recent upgrade that restore point was purged from the system so I was at a point of no return. Audio devices have never worked again since.
It now requires rebuilding the Windows registry from scratch to enable audio again, and without any backup of previous registry hive files this is impossible without doing a complete reinstall of Windows. Windows Registry is a one way street, it only keeps growing and growing from the first day you install Windows and onward, like a versioning system, but without a reliable mechanism of reversing the changes (except for maybe System Restore). Microsoft made sure that RegEdit (one of last resorts for this type of problem) is disabled by default starting with Windows 10 version 1803 in order to conserve space on users' computers (maybe 300 MB to 900 MB).
So yes, Windows Update can certainly mess things up. In my experience, it does not happen very often, maybe once in two years, but when it happens the results have almost always been catastrophic.
Ron wrote:OK, I have reinstalled several times, and even tried installing an earlier version with the same results. I discovered ATI was running in the background, which does me no good if I need to schedule a new backup routine. I'm going to look at the KB articles but what I don't understand is why everything was working just fine and suddenly this happened. I'm beginning to suspect it has something to do with a Windows update but have no way to know for sure. Other folks got the same updates but don't seem to have the same issues. My system isn't Intel, so perhaps that plays a role; just don't know. I hate to have to find another backup solution after using ATI for so many years but if you can't access the interface it isn't much use to you.
I don't think it will do you much to just uninstall and reinstall True Image. You have to do a bit more than that, because every time you uninstall it, it leaves old stuff behind that needs to be cleaned. It's not unlikely that this too (just like my problem with audio devices) is related to Windows registry. If the registry is in a bad state, for one reason (Windows Update) or another (True Image), in my experience it often does not do any good to ignore this and just install anew. You have to try to clean it up, and Acronis has provided this utility called "Cleanup Utility" specifically for this type of situations. It's a bit of a drastic measure, and a hassle, but in this situation I think nothing less of that is appropriate.
As a matter of fact I believe you can use Cleanup Utility straight away, without first uninstalling True Image because the utility will do all that work for you.
Make sure you have your license key ready for the next time you install True Image.
Alternatively, you could as well use the backup of your PC that you already have to restore your PC to a previous state, prior to the incident that caused the problem to begin with. I'm assuming you have a complete system image backup of your PC, rather than just a file and folder backup. But since you can't open True Image from within Windows, you will have to create or download and write an Acronis Recovery Media and start your PC off of that. Once there you should be able to recover your entire PC as long as you have your backup disk connected and you have a complete disk image of your system disk.
As for not having an Intel based system, that's nothing to be concerned about. I have a mix of Intel and AMD based PCs at home and they all work just fine both with Windows and True Image. Up until when they no longer do of course, but having an Intel based PC makes it no less prone to error than having an AMD based PC, in my experience. My two latest PCs are both based on AMD now, I am moving away from Intel because AMD offers more performance and value for my money. But I also build my own so I have a greater choice of what goes inside the box (not necessary to have the "Intel inside" badge).
Ron, the way I see it you have the following two ways forward.
Option 1: Use Acronis Cleanup Utility to uninstall and clean the current installation of True Image, then install and activate True Image anew. See the link below.
https://kb.acronis.com/aticleanup
Option 2: Use Acronis Recovery Media to start your computer off of and use it to restore a system disk image of your PC to a point in time before the incident. You have two options of obtaining the Recovery Media, you can either download a ready-made ISO file from Acronis when you're logged into your Acronis account, or you can use True Image and its Rescue Media Builder to create the same. Since you can't open True Image at all, you will likely need to download the ready-made ISO file from Acronis. See the links below.
https://kb.acronis.com/content/65508
https://kb.acronis.com/getmedia
You will need an empty USB flash drive and a tool to write the ISO file to the flash drive and make it bootable. I receommend that you use the well respected (free and open source) third party tool called Rufus. You can download it from the link below.
Supplementary screenshots:
From your Acronis account you will be able to see a download link like this.
Hey all. I just wanted to say thanks for all the suggestions. As it turned out the problem is certainly NOT with ATI. I have another program I used to scan the IP addresses of my network and it is doing the very same thing. Just like ATI, it was working fine until just recently. Something other than these two applications is the culprit. I've run a deep scan with Norton and everything comes up clean but who knows. I downloaded the ISO (thanks for the link) and have already made a boot USB drive so I can access my last good backup image. Now I have to decide if I want to restore that or opt for doing a completely fresh install of Windows. I know that would be the best but it takes me about three days to get everything back to normal..... what to do. I'll probably take the lazy way out and just restore the image. After all, that's what I bought ATI for in the first place! I'm going to image this drive before restoring and offload to another machine so I can experiment. If I ever find the cause I'll be sure to share here. Thanks again.
Ron
Ron, out of interest, what non-Intel CPU are you using and what chipset and/or motherboard? I am running ATI on multiple AMD systems and have not had this problem (in recent times at any rate). On one of my Intel systems I am seeing a similar problem with Outlook; reinstalling Microsoft 365 solve the problem (twice so far).
Ian
Ron, it's nice to see that you're making progress.
As it turned out the problem is certainly NOT with ATI. I have another program I used to scan the IP addresses of my network and it is doing the very same thing. Just like ATI, it was working fine until just recently. Something other than these two applications is the culprit. I've run a deep scan with Norton and everything comes up clean but who knows.
My guess is that it's something within Windows core components that's misconfigured, for whatever the reason. I bet it's the Windows registry, it almost always is, even by proxy everything ends up in the registry. Nearly all third party programs and tools, including Windows itself uses the registry to store both crucial and less important configurations.
I downloaded the ISO (thanks for the link) and have already made a boot USB drive so I can access my last good backup image. Now I have to decide if I want to restore that or opt for doing a completely fresh install of Windows. I know that would be the best but it takes me about three days to get everything back to normal..... what to do.
I know the feeling, same here. I take pleasure in reinstalling Windows from time to time. I used to do that routinely until I started using Windows 10 (I got lazy and too dependant on the current configuration).
I'll probably take the lazy way out and just restore the image. After all, that's what I bought ATI for in the first place! I'm going to image this drive before restoring and offload to another machine so I can experiment.
Ron, if you're feeling adventurous, after you make that last good image of the drive, you could try doing one of these things (or all of them, in this order).
1. Run the System File Checker to check for system file corruption. This command will only do a scan to check the condition, it will not apply any fixes or do anything destructive (even if it did, you now have a backup of the drive).
SFC /SCANNOW
2. Use the Deployment Image Servicing and Management to check the health of the current Windows system components. Again, this command will only do a check, it will not apply any fixes.
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
3. If you do encounter some issues, you could use this command to try to restore the health of Windows system components.
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
4. Open up System Restore and see if you have any saved restore points that were created prior to the incident. If you do, then you can create a new restore point, just so you can roll back your changes to present time, and then turn back the clock to that old restore point and see if it fixes the issue.
5. Perform in-place upgrade. This will inevitably repair any misconfiguration by forcing Windows to migrate registry keys and hives, and when it does this it can put things back to their correct positions (parameters and what have you). You will need a bootable media containing your Windows version and build number (preferably the same or close to it). This can be done with just the ISO file of your Windows, by mounting it from within Windows and running the Setup.exe. You don't need to write it out to a USB flash drive and then boot off of that.
6. Use the Acronis bootable media you now have to restore the whole disk to a previous state. If you don't know when the incident occurred you will have to play the guessing game, perhaps starting off from the nearly last backup and going backwards until the issue no longer exists.
7. Reset Windows 10 with Reset This PC. You will find this in the Settings app. (I'm assuming you're running Windows 10.)
8. Perform a clean install of your Windows 10. As you can see, I also reserve this as the last resort. I don't like spending days on reinstalling my programs and printers and what not.
On one of my Intel systems I am seeing a similar problem with Outlook; reinstalling Microsoft 365 solve the problem (twice so far).
Interesting... I bet that's because it reinstalls Visual C++ "redistributable" runtimes. An age old Achilles' heel of Windows programs (long before they were popularly dubbed "apps"). Especially that one DLL that many programmers relied upon when writing their software, but were not allowed to package and distribute it along with the software they made (it's a proprietary library), and Microsoft did nothing to go out of their way and make it available for free download by its Windows users (or even to include it in Windows itself so that such software written with that DLL in mind can run). No, they only made it available as part of a Visual C++ IDE purchase ($$$) for the programmer community, not for its Windows users. That's when they started to put up these "Visual C++ redistributable" packages on their "Microsoft Download Center". These packages were later allowed to be distributed by third party software makers (hence the name).
I don't know for sure what True Image is written in, but it's not surprising that reinstalling one program fixes an error in another program. It is weird though...
To everyone who offered advice and suggestions, my deepest appreciation. I still have no idea what happened to cause this problem. Was it Windows... was it some other application... I'll never know now. I finally had to weigh my time against experimenting with different things and just did a clean install of Windows. I started to restore an image but not knowing what caused this didn't give me a good feeling that it might not be on one of the backups, and if I picked the wrong one I could start this all over again. So I opted for the new installation, even though it took days to install all the software again. The only good thing, if there is one, is the fact that all my data resides on my server so I didn't have to worry about that. But that added another dimension to my project, and more time. My two servers are in an open frame rack and I had them located in a small room off my wood shop. That was a bad choice on my part due to all the sawdust. Since they frequently ran hot due to clogged filters I decided to move them to an air conditioned location but, of course, that required re-routing the wiring. More delay. Anyway, I finally reached the point where I was able to get back on the forum and thank you folks again. I plan to check in frequently. I've been on many forums in the past but this has the friendliest and most helpful group I have every seen. I probably won't be able to help much with computer issues but, hey, if you have any problems with your nuclear reactor give me a shout! I hope all of you have a great day and no problems.
Ron
I'm sorry for the late reply. I just want to say I'm happy to see you got this sorted out Ron.
I understand the pain in having to reinstall Windows and all the applications. This is something most of us can relate to. In fact, I reinstalled Windows on my main computer only a week ago due to broken audio function caused by corrupted Windows registry, which in turn was caused by power loss on more than one occasion, which in turn was caused by repeated crashes caused by one particular Windows update.
Not all problems in Windows are caused by Windows, but 99.99% of all problems in Windows can be fixed by reinstalling Windows. So the lesson is to detach ourselves from the Windows partition, and to practice storing our files elsewhere. The same goes for applications. Not all applications are well suited for installation on a different partition, other than the Windows partition. In a distant past now, you could install Windows on the C drive and your applications on the D drive. You could then reinstall Windows without affecting your applications, and the best part was you could pick up where you left off and reuse the same applications you installed previously without a need to reinstall them to use them. These days however you would most certainly have to reinstall them, they get too deeply rooted and nested to be portable. The benefit of installing them to a different partition in this time and age is that you can salvage some or all of your user data and configuration files.
I think you made the right call Ron. I would probably have done the same and reinstalled Windows, with resistance alright but I would have done that. It's better than continuing to use a system that's left in a bad state. Before you know it, one problem leads to another, and you don't want that. It's better to start fresh sometimes.