bld 7046 Recovery Disk boots but doesn't run very well

Larry,

Since you have the Plus Pack, the first thing I would try is a WinPE ISO build. A tutorial to do this is described here - this was not included in the thread mentioned above. WinPE works fine on my system, at least for build 6053 - I have had no issues with this build at all.

Larry. I ran into problems when I updated to build 7046. See my comments multiple://forum.acronis.com/forum/9793. I did a repair install which cleaned up my issues with the Acronis Loader version. That's the one you build from within TI. I always maintain three versions of the recovery disks:

1. Acronis Loader version of the recovery CD
2. Isolinux version of the recovery CD downloaded from my account.
3. WINPE version.

CD's are cheap so I don't hesitate to build multiple copies. I prefer the WINPE version because of the very large number of hardware drivers built in. I did the find the Linux versions to be slow responding when browsing for the .tib files to recover.

thomas,

I also ran repair installs for ATI and PlusPack to solve another issue. It didn't fix anything but I did find out how to cure the other issue.

I'm pretty sure I created the recovery disk after doing the repair installs but I could make another one just to be sure.

I'll also try the WinPE ISO build that Gary Darsey pointed out in post #1 above.

--Larry

I started programming operating systems in 1961 and continued with OS, file system, disk drivers and database management system development until 2002. I find the tutorial (pointed out in post #1 by Gary) to be quite daunting. I'm sorry, but using ATI for doing backups and recovery SHOULD NOT BE THIS DIFFICULT! I've had nothing but problems with EVERYTHING I have tried since getting the product a couple weeks ago. I feel like I have to be a Windows Super-Tech to make the product useful. And it's not useful yet.

I'm unhappy.

--Larry

Larry-

There are definitely easier to use products available than True Image.

One free, easy-to-use product I tried was quite interesting. No bother with too much documentation to plow through. Only nine printed pages - neat! Just another four printed pages filled predominantly with reasons why your restored image does not boot, just change you BIOS parameters, etc. Great!

Not a lot of options. Interface looks like a poorly defined video game. Just a little difficulty in reading my drives, and it had to be convinced that my backup location really existed and was valid. But still easy to use - not too many options to clutter up the task of disk imaging.

The backup imaging process (without validation) took 2.5 times as long as True Image took to do the backup and validation of the same disk. Given all the above "difficulties" why should I doubt that the image would produce a bootable system?

Another free, popular, and apparently easy-to-use product does all imaging through Volume Shadow copying Service. Only restoring is done via bootable media. But looking through their forums, there seems to be some difficulty with hidden partitions like I have on my Dell system. Seem to able to get around this by changing partition settings, mucking around with BOOT.INI - maybe this is not so easy.

I fortunately have had no problems with True Image myself - it works very well on my system. Obviously, your experience has been quite different. From what I have seen looking around for the best approach to disk imaging, I came to the conclusion that there is no single product in this space which works for all systems - all of them have difficulties. The trick is finding out what works for you on your system, and this can be a very painful process.

I am curious to find out what you found daunting about the tutorial I put together. Except for the totally optional portion about updating the A43 file manager, the rest (at least for the direct creation of a WinPE ISO file) is following wizard screens - I just try to point out what information should go on these screens, as I found the procedure in section 15.3.2 of the manual a bit confusing, slightly inaccurate, and thought the presentation could be improved upon.

Gary, There are several things contributing to my frustrations right now.

The first is struggling with ATI. The Win7 system is brand new (it's amazingly different from XP under all the new eye candy) and I really want a backup that I can get to without having to get Windows running (a bare metal recovery). I believe that I have ATI backups where I can recover files and folders as long as Windows and ATI are running. I try to be super cautious with my systems and not having a bare metal recovery mechanism makes me uncomfortable.

I will be away from the Win7 system for a few weeks so I only have less than a day to get the bootable recovery mechanism working. I don't think I will make it in time.... I'll just have to hope it will boot and run fine several weeks from now.

About the tutorial.
In the first 3 sentences, there are two environments or applications I've never heard about and don't have: Microsoft Windows AIK and A43 File Management Utility. So right off the bat I have to start researching what they are and if they work on Win7 64bit (I'm finding lots of stuff that I'm used to using and other recommend that will not work in the 64bit environment). And then there are pictures of how to replace files in the ATI installation folder to update A43. That gets me a bit concerned since it usually isn't a good idea to replace files in an installed app like ATI. And without having downloaded A43 it's not clear which files are supposed to be replaced. Maybe it would be clear if I did the download.
Of course I didn't really take note of your comment that if you don't think you need the updated A43 then you can skip that part. But how would I know if I need the updated version or not. My current thinking is that I don't need to do that update. And I also realized that there is an A43 environment in the Acronis product files.

So now my first step is to install the AIK facility and I see that you have provided links, including one for the Win7 version. That's good!

The use of the wizard does seem straightforward and I assume that the CD burned from the .iso file contains both a bootable environment (WinPE) and some form of ATI. There are several statements following the end of the wizard part of the tutorial. Here are a couple:
QUOTE:
Once you close Acronis True Image Home, you will wind up in a command prompt window. Find you way to the A43 folder (under trueimagehome) and start A43 to begin nosing around.

To get out of A43, enter "exit" at the command line prompt, and you system *should* reboot.
END QUOTE:

I take it that these apply to the environment booted up from the CD. After you close ATI do you have to find and start A43? For what purpose? Can you just exit somehow and get the PC to reboot? Maybe if I were doing it, instead of reading about it, it would be clear.

And then I tried reading the posts following the tutorial and decided that I didn't need to worry about whatever they were talking about.
And then I came to Tutorial Part II. That's when I decided things were way too complicated. After cooling down a bit, and reading quite a bit of part II it seems to me I can ignore all of that too.

I hope my feedback is useful. I certainly do appreciate the work you and others do to help out new ATI users like me. Now when I go back and reread the tutorial, for the 3rd time, things seem clearer.

--Larry

There is support for only 32-bit WinPE builds. True Image won't run on a 64-bit WinPE build.

The part about "exit" after A43 is a typo, which I should correct.

But I just found out that I can't edit the first part of the tutorial - when it was made "sticky" I probably lost edit rights to it. Sorry for that.

A43 is separate from True Image, and its files are in a separate directory. The use of A43 is totally optional. I found that A43 in the BartPE environment (another preinstalled environment used for booting up a system without the installed operating system) was very useful, so I became a fan of this utility. It is similar to Windows Explorer, and you are right, I don't mention anything about it that is descriptive. Definitely an oversight.

If all one does is run True Image from the WinPE bootable media, A43 does not ever need to be used. I was very pleasantly surprised that Acronis included this utility in their plug-in. I use A43 a great deal under Win XP Pro as well as under WinPE.

With the direct ISO creation and using the WinPE bootable media include True Image, True Image loads automatically. When you exit out of True Image, you are left at the command prompt of the base WinPE environment. At this command line, the command "exit" will reboot your system. Nowhere else can I find this fact documented. I was trying to give people some idea of what to do other than just turning off the power of their system if they happened to end up at this command line. Myself, I have the system shut down after backup and validation from True Image, so no command line comes into play under "normal" usage.

Part II is totally optional. This is just for completeness in making the manual clear. This part is only for those whose want to modify the WinPE installation (and have the knowledge to do so), which is not required at all. If you create the ISO from the first part of the tutorial, you have no need for the second part of the tutorial. It is confusing, but that has to do with Microsoft's part, not Acronis's part (the WinPE ISO Builder).

A43 file manager is useful, since the base WinPE environment is command line based - no "Windows-like" shell that most are comfortable with. But A43 must be started from the command line, and when exited, will leave you back at the command line.

Installation of the WAIK is not too hard (at least for me), but this again is Microsoft's part, not Acronis's part.

I work under XP Pro SP3. I have no knowledge or experience with Win 7, and from all I see, I don't voluntarily want to acquire any. Every computer I touch, home or work, has XP Pro.

Gary Darsey wrote:

There is support for only 32-bit WinPE builds. True Image won't run on a 64-bit WinPE build.

Are you saying there is no way to build and run the WinPE environment on 64bit Win7?
Or are you saying you do a 32-bit WinPE build and it will run on 64bit Win7?

I also downloaded and burned the ISOLinux recovery environment from my account. It booted and was just as catatonic as the normal Acronis recovery environment.

--Larry

True Image runs only in a 32-bit WinPE build.

You are booting from the bootable media. An image is placed in memory an run from there. It doesn't matter what is on the system - you are booting a separate environment altogether. The bootable CD could care less what operating system is installed, or even if there is no operating system at all! Win 7, Win XP, Linux - all are irrelevant.

There seems to be immense confusion here.

Larry, the easiest thing to do first is to make a TI rescue CD and see if it can,

1. Boot your computer successfully - that means that it gets to the Loading Acronis...... screen and then loads TI itself.

2. Check that it can see your drives including externals, that your mouse and keyboard work.

3. If you have made an image already, then validate the image from within the rescue environment. This will give you 98% certainty that the rescue environment can recover your system. For a 99% certainty you could perform a dummy recovery which would take you all the way to the point where the 'Recover' button appears. For 100% restore to a spare hard drive - however W7 may sulk here as the disk ID will not be the same as appears in registry - it should attempt to repair itself to allow normal booting.

If your PC uses very new hardware (chipsets, BIOS etc) then the rescue CD might not have the drivers required. You'll know this because either the Linux boot loader will complain or hang or it will load but can't load TI, or it can load TI but TI can't see your drives or your mouse won't work - unusual for a keyboard to have a problem unless it's a wireless one (mine do work). PSD mice or keyboards will always work.

If the standard rescue CD sulks, then you can download the SAFE mode TI, this uses a DOS based environment and uses BIOS calls rather than drivers. It is possible with the Linux based environment to try command switches, some of which are listed in the back of the user guide, if they work, then TI2010 gives you th eopportunity of burning the CD with these switches included.

Your final two choices as far as the rescue environment not working is either to use the BartPE script that comes with TI or make a WindowsPE based CD.

The advantages here are that a Bart or WinPE will always have the most upto date drivers as they will take them off your system, the recovery will be slightly faster as the Windows drivers are slightly more efficient.

If you don't want to make more than one CD (if the standard one fails) thenmake it on a RW CD.

Colin,

The TI Rescue CD boots fine (the ones from TI builds 6053 and 7046). They see the drives and the keyboard and wireless mouse work fine. And I can double click a backup and restore individual files from it. I can also Browse for Backups. The other option I want to do is Validate from the recovery environment. I can't get Validate to do anything. I can right-click and get the context menu (where one of the items is Validate). After selecting Validate absolutely nothing happens. It's just a no-op. No error. No pop-up dialog box. Nada. Same if I select Details from the menu. (As I reported in an earlier post in this thread, I did get one Validate to work once using the standard TI Rescue CD. But that was preceded and followed with a bunch of attempts that would not even start validating, that is, after selecting the Validate option nothing happened).

I've also downloaded the iso file (I think it's called the ISOLinux environment) from the My Account web page and it also boots and can restore files but Validate and Details are no-ops.

I've never heard of the "SAFE mode TI" that you mention. Is it yet another recovery environment beyond the standard TI recovery CD, the IsoLinux environment, the BartPE environment or the WinPE environment?

I have not tried the BartPE or WinPE options yet.

--Larry

I had a very similar problem yesterday. I wanted to test the new TI build. I created a Rescue disk and booted from it. I wanted to make sure it could see my TIB files. I didn't try validation or a recover. Rebooted my system; Windows 7 64-bit would not boot after running the Rescue disk.

Long story short, I decided to try to run restore against my latest TIB image. Larry couldn't get validate to work; I couldn't get recover to work - just like Larry describe it - no-op - nothing happens.

Fortunately, I had a Windows image backup and used Windows recovery to get my system back. But now I have completely lost faith in TI. Is the problem the latest build? Appreciate any thoughts on this.

The SAFE environment is an addition to the standard rescue CD, it is avialable from your account under the Free Plugins tab. Once installed it adds the SAFE choice to your standard TI rescue CD.

Are these disk images of files and folder backups?

Does validate work from within Windows?

The backups are all disk backups (not file & folder). They were all made from the on-line Windows environment. There are two in the Secure Zone, one test backup on the system disk and one on an external disk (USB connection). Validate works fine from the on-line Windows environment (and all the backups validate OK).

Thanks for the clarification on the SAFE environment.

--Larry

I just chatted with support and reported the same problem (image backup validates under Windows; but "no-op" [nothing happens] when I try to validate or restore using the rescue disc).

I was told to try this: http://download.acronis.com/sl/usccvamnabqzstmjbkor/support/ISO/26/True…

This contains the "Acronis Universal Restore" feature. This doesn't seem to be part of TI Home 2010 - it seems to be part of a corporate product. Appreciate any feedback. Haven't had time to test yet.

Gary,
I gave it a try. No joy...... It is catatonic in the same ways as the others I have tried.

I wanted to see what the product was so I went to the Help menu and selected About. Nothing happened.
I tried again - got the About info. I tried many times after that and it never worked again.
The About info said it was ATI Home 2010 with Plus Pack build 7046. If you believe that, then this is the current build of the product.
The PlusPack does include the Acronis Universal Restore feature.

Since Help>About was unreliable, it seems to me that there is something quite systemic wrong with the product.

--Larry

Hi Larry,

Thanks for testing. What's your recommendation at this stage? Revert to the earlier version? This is very disappointing...

Hi Again Larry,

Went back to support. The latest suggestions: try the ISO downloaded directly from our accounts. Also, try this version: http://download.acronis.com/sl/wuewdudknkbdrlugbyuj/support/ISO/isolinu…

Presumably, this is the last of the versions to try and hopefully this problem will be escalated.

I'm out of time and can't try any more tests with the Win7 system for a few weeks. Maybe you or someone else will figure out what is going on.

The Acronis Recovery Disk from build 6053 acts the same way. I tried it again yesterday or the day before. Build 6053 is the first version I have.
I can't be sure (so much testing has happened and I didn't keep a log book!) but I think the build 6053 standard recovery disk used to work. I first noticed problems when I updated to the build 7046 product. I don't see how the updated product could cause an existing bootable environment to stop working. But, as I used to always say "In the face of bugs, you NEVER know what might happen!"

Good luck!
--Larry

I tried all the flavors of the 7046 disc - none of them work - same issue - nothing happens when you tried to validate, recover or perform any other operation against a tib file.

I tried 6053 rescue disk - works fine.

Acronis team, can you please comment?

Thanks,
Gary

Hello all,

Thanks to another forum member, I was able to resolve my problem. I was unable to start validate, recover and other TIB file operations. As it turns out, this was apparently because of my wireless mouse. The mouse works fine otherwise with the Rescue Disc - and it works perfectly with earlier builds. Apparently something in 7046 broke the wireless mouse.

Using a wired mouse, all is well.

Hello Gary,

Thank you for your response. Could you please let me know the exact model of your wireless mouse?

We are looking forward to hearing back from you. Please do not hesitate to ask additional questions if the provided information is not clear or you need a further assistance. 

Thank you.

Hi, the mouse is the Logitech Performance Mouse MX.

I have the USB wireless mouse issues as well with build 7046 TIH2010/PlusPack bootable media. Mouse hardware is a Microsoft Wireless Optical 2.0. When attempting to verify an archive, right-click context menu comes up, but left-click on "Verify Archive", and nothing happens. It works if you press the "Enter" key.

 Hello all,

Thank you for your responses.

The issue with wireless mouse has been addressed partially in build 7046. Nevertheless, the fix doesn't work for several of our customers. Our Linux developers are working on the issue.

Gary and garryj,

I am sending a file to you via Private Messages, please create another Acronis Bootable Media and see if the issue remains. 

We are looking forward to hearing back from you.

Please do not hesitate to ask additional questions if the provided information is not clear or you need a further assistance. 

Thank you.

Hello Oleg.
I have 2 hard drives on my PC. On the first there are 3 partitions:
E (Recovery disk), C with main system and H for work. Second drive is used alsow for saving backup images.
As for me ATIH 2010 7046 can create a backup image of C: partition.
C: paptition can be recovered by using ATIH 2010 7046 Rescue Media without mistakes.
But when I ordered to recovery C: partition from main program after restartig program damages partition and I can see "NTLDR is missing".
Now I cannot understand why main program can create a working Rescue Media and cannot recovery a partition without mistakes.
I am once more refer to ATIH v.10:
after restarting it begins instalatin of program like from Rescue Media v10 but with neccessary parameters.
May be this comments will help to solve the problem.
Sincerely
Ya Wan

I am the original poster and have been out of the country for 5 weeks.
I'm wondering what the status of this issue is (issue with recovery disk not working with wireless mouse).
My system has a wireless mouse (Microsoft, not sure of model).

--Larry

Hello all,

Thank you for your replies. I will do my best to resolve this for you.

Ya Wan,

The NTLDR is missing error message means that the Boot.ini file is corrupt or points to incorrect partition. Please use this article to resolve the issue.

larrymcg,

As Oleg mentioned, this has been resolved partially. Allow me to send you a private message with the latest bootable media. If it still fails to work, please use the same bootable media to collect an Acronis Linux Report and kindly send me a private message with it. I shall forward it to our Expert team for further investigation.

Let me know if you have any other questions please.

Thank you.

Anton,
In message #15 above, there is a link to a file that has the same name as the file you supplied in your private message to me.
The file name is:

download.acronis.com/sl/...../support/ISO/26/TrueImage_7046aur__Standard_english_acroldr.iso

I tried it out on April 12 and it failed in the same way as all the others.
Since the files have the same name I'm assuming they have the same content.

Could the file you named have different and newer content?

--Larry

Was a WinPE ISO build tried out and also failed? The downloadable ISOs will generally have the same filenames but will differ in driver support.

Hello all,

Gary, thank you for your help.

larrymcg,

Although the file name is the same, it has been updated once at least. We are currently working to implement a system, which will allow our customers to see the version of the bootable CD. As a workaround, please check this post, with a few commands you can see the version of the CD you are using.

Once you try the latest version, please let me know of the results.

Thank you.