Boot to a blinking cursor after Acronis "successfully" restore my drive
I have used Acronis for years and I recently started having the following problem.
After I restore my back up image to a laptop Lenovo ThinkPad T61 and reboot the computer it just sits at a blinking cursor. The steps I took are listed below. I am sorry the thread is so long but I wanted to list the steps already taken
- Purchase a new 160 GB SATA hard drive from IBM using my system serial number and model number
- Restored the image from the network after validating the image
- rebooted got the blinking cursor
- Manually created partitions and dropped the image into the 2 partitions I created. The partitions matched the size of the partitions in the image
- Rebooted and again I received the blinking cursor
Copied the image locally and tried to restore by deleting all partitions and manually creating partitions with the same result blinking cursor
- I tried restoring the image with the MBR being restored and without the MBR being restored. I tried to re initialize the MBR and fix the MBR using an XP recovery CD still no luck just a blinking cursor.
- Tried to bring the image locally as well as using an external drive still got a blinking cursor
- I tried with and without Universal restore and still got a blinking cursor
- I went into the bios and changed the SATA driver mode Compatibility and that did not work either.
- I ran the full post diagnostics and it see's the drive but does not boot. It just goes the blinking cursor
- I downloaded the hard drive firmware upgrade from Lenovo and ran it but it said there was no firmware to upgrade.
- If I install a clean copy of windows the machine boots properly
- If I drop an image on the windows partition after the above step was followed the machine stops at the blinking cursor again.
- The image was made from a T61
I am out of ideas and could you use some help.
I was going to try the new version of Acronis until it said it was going to uninstall me previous version which I do not want to do.
Thanks!
I tried the following:
True Image Workstation 9.1 build 3887 with Universal Restore
Echo Workstation with Universal Restore build 8163
What OS are you restoring?
Is the new drive a larger one?
Sounds as though Windows can't find it's booting files.
I am restoring Windows XP professional.
The original image was created with a 160GB drive and the new drive is 160GB.
I checked the boot.ini file and it seems normal, so I am not sure what else to check.
Hi ZimBoy,
Why did you not allow ATI to create the new primary partition on the hard disk? ATI does give you control (auto or manual) when creating the partition sizes when it creates partitions during a clone operation. You mentioned that you manually created new partitions on the new hard disk before restoring your backups. Maybe the manually created primary partition on the new hard disk doesn't have a MBR and isn't set as bootable (active)? Just a thought. :-)
Hi GoneToPlaid,
- I checked and the primary partition was listed as active and I tried to reinitialize the MBR using GDISk and I also tried using the fixboot and fixmbr from the windows recovery console. Same result blink cursor
- I tried doing the restore and automatically setting the partitions sizes based on the original image and selecting delete all current partitions and I got the blinking cursor.
- I then removed all the partitions on the new drive using gdisk and set the partitions manually when restoring the image. I tried this process with and without the MBR and with and without universal restore.
Each time I got a blinking cursor
Hello all,
ZimBoy, Most probably, the issue was caused by an IBM hidden service partition that you have restored. The service partition has a certain sector offset of Windows boot loader. As a result of restoration this offset changes, which makes the system unbootable
Please try to restore the image without the service partition by unchecking the partition marked as EISA on the Partitions Selection screen. It should fix the issue.
Feel free to reply to this thread if the issue still persists, I'll be glad to help you.
Thank you.
Hello Ilya:
I tried you recommendation and my results are below.
I tried to restore just the C Drive with and without the MBR with same results.
I also tried to restore the C drive only with and without using universal restore and I got the same results.
I then tried to restore the C drive only with and without using universal restore as well as with and without the MBR and gain I got the same results.
I tried on a differnt machine following the same steps as above and on that machine I received a disk read error that I was unable to repair.
In all instances the hidden service partion was unchecked and not restored.
Any other ideas I could try?
Thank you.
I am new to Acronis TI Home 2011 w/Plus Pack, and I'm beginning to wonder why I made the purchase. I too attempted to restore a successfully created image, and now all I get is a blinking cursor at the top left of a blank screen?
I really don't have a lot of time to waste. I already re-restored the image, with the same result, taking the better part of a day to do so each time. I need my computer to be productive, not give me these problems, that's why I thought Acronis would be a good investment. So far NOT!
Please help me get this straightened out.
ProfessorGT,
Do you get the blinking cursor when booting the rescue CD or when trying to boot in to Windows?
Colin,
Either way. Acronis Loader attempts to load and then it goes to the blinking cursor. I'm stuck because even if I try to boot from the "Bootable Media" disk, it does the same thing. The media disk is good because in another machine it works fine.
I don't know what to do. It's as if the restore has rendered the drive totally dead, and it was a properly working drive previously.
Thanks!
The CD may well work in another machine, but due to it's Linux drivers can fail on another.
If you have activated the Acronis Recovery Manager, then this uses the same Linux as the rescue CD.
There is also the possibility that the problem is as simple as the drive hasn't been marked active after the restore.
1. Did you make a full disk image or a partitions based one?
2. How is the Pc/Laptop set up - that is what type of drives, is the image on an external or internal, what is set to eb first boot and what is the disk priority in the BIOS?
3. Just to be clear, when you originally booted from the rescue CD, it was able to 'see' the image drive and the destination drive and was able to recover the image?
4. Have you validated the image?
Is it possible to temporarily install the drive that seems to be not working into another computer so that Windows Disk Manager or if you download the trial of Disk Director the DD boot disk can give us some information of the state the drive is in?
Somehow I got a Toshiba a205 laptop up and running after hours of troubleshooting the blinking cursor issue.. Also the Toshiba recovery disks gave the error 03-eeee-0000. So my only hope of restoring was to get the Acronis image -- that was created with the bootable cd Acronis home 2011, to work.
I reloaded it and tried so many different ways of picking thru the recovery options.. still no luck. Then I tried creating the secure zone partition and putting the image into it(from a usb external drive) After copying the image to the secure zone, I had the "shutdown when complete" checked.
The laptop booted into Vista -- like nothing ever happened. My guess is that somehow the laptop could not see the boot files.. the hard drive would flash a little on powerup then stop --then the blinking cursor.. so it looked at the drive and saw no boot file.. but then stayed that way- no error msg. Adding the secure partition then adding the image.tib file did something to make it work properly..
The picture if you can see it.. shows the usb 1Terabyte drive and the laptop drive.. I think the PRI,ACT was not on the correct partition.. The pic shows the config that allowed it to boot. Hope this works for someone else!!
Dave:
I am having the very same problem -- a flashing white cursor after a restoring a system disk image on a new replacement laptop hard drive.
I am unfamiliar with the Acronis "Secure Zones" feature. (I just read the built in "help" for that feature, so sorta get the idea...) And I could not quite follow what you did that allowed you to solve your (and my) problem. I isn't clear to me if you created a "secure zone" on the new drive you were installing, or, if you created a secure zone onto some other drive to which you then copied your disc image, from which you then installed to the new drive. As I explained, I'm confused. Unfortunately, the JPG you included didn't really help. It looks like you added a 3rd partition to your new hard drive, that 3rd partition being the secure zone (and in it is a copy of your system partition?)
I'm using Acronis True Image Home 2011. The laptop I'm restoring to is running XP Home.
Update: I just discovered that I may have been restoring my disc images incorrectly. I didn't understand/realize about including "MBR restoration" to a new hard drive. I am rerunning the restore process now, including the MBR, and I'll see if this makes a difference...
Aaron,
It is more than likely that the disk hasn't been made Active, this is one possibility for the flashing white cursor on reboot after a restoration.
I am having the very same problem -- a flashing white cursor after a restoring a system disk image on a new replacement laptop hard drive.
[snip]
Update: I just discovered that I may have been restoring my disc images incorrectly. I didn't understand/realize about including "MBR restoration" to a new hard drive. I am rerunning the restore process now, including the MBR, and I'll see if this makes a difference...
SOLVED. Okay, it turns out that my problem was the MBR (or lack thereof). Once I included the MBR option in the disc image restore to the new hard drive, it now boots up fine! Funny (frustrating!) how you don't know one little (but important) thing, and that causes you to chase your tail! :-)
Yes, and for some software, it helps if you also include the "Recover Disk Signature" option which is on the same screen as when selecting the target disk.
Select mbr and then select Recover Disk Signature. Acronis and Adobe are two which look for that information as part of their normal operation.
I see that a moderator promised to come back and help. Clearly they did not.
Acronis doesn't care. They know this program is buggy, unstable and simply will not do what it is advertised to do. When you try chat support, you get put with someone who cannot seem to do anything but cut and paste standard answers that DONT work.
Then they blow you off and stop responding.
This program is a complete and total rip off. Acronis has 34% customer dissatisfaction rating. Did you know that?? I sure wish I did before I paid my hard earned money for this worthless software.
Eric,
What problem are you having, which version and build, and what OS are you running?
Eric, did you get up on the wrong side of the bed today? I do not have the experience with Acronis that you have. My acronis has worked fine. Hope you get your issues resolved soon.
I'm using Acronis TIM 2011 Ver 14.0.6942 installed on Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit.
I did a fresh install of Win XP Pro on an old IBM Thinkpad T40 laptop with a 60GB Fujitsi 2.5" IDE drive. Drive contained two freshly created NTFS partitions and all required device drivers, Service Packs, updates and required software. I used ATIM2011 to create a disk image of the drive onto my own machine using a Plexus IDE to USB adapter.
Wanting to transfer the imaged OS partition onto a 30GB Hitachi drive, I used ATIM2011 to do the restoration, remembering to mark the parition as Primary Active. However, upon booting after insterting the 30GB drive into the laptop, I was greeted with the flashing cursor mentioned by the OP of this thread.
I doubled checked the parition flags in Acronis Disk Director Suite 2011 and they were fine. I tried fixboot and fixmbr from the XP Recovery Console, same result.
Over a number of days I tried numerous things including restoring including the MBR, excl the MBR, with and without the disk signature, all with no joy. In the end I suspected ATIM2011 hadn't restored whatever files XP needed to boot properly so had an idea. I started a clean install of XP Pro onto the 30GB disk and once installed, I confirmed it was booting ok.
Then, to put back all the driver files, Service Packs, Updates and software, I recovered all the files and folders from the previously created Disk image onto the disk, leaving out all the hidden system files in the root of the drive - namely boot.ini, config.sys, io.sys, msdos.sys, ntdetect.com, ntldr & pagefile.sys. I also left out the System Volume Information, Recycler and some random looking cd208140030edf470954a8.. folder - all on a hunch - nothing highly educated.
For some reason ATIM2011 put all of these onto a folder called Drive(N) on the drive which I didn't notice, so when I rebooted the latop with the drive in, I got the bare Windows without all the SP's, Updates etc. So I moved the contents back to where they were supposed to be and voila, everything now seems to be working fine.
So a few days of jumping through hoops and faffing around instead of what should have been a 10 minute job. The reason I did all the faffing around was so that I could figure out a way of getting back to a working system from a previously created Acronis disk image. Obviously I still suspect this is a bug in ATIM2011, which is a shame as I've been using Acronis TIM since V9, through V10 and then 2010 and it's not really let me down before. I upgraded to V2011 when I upgraded my machine from Vista to Win7 expecting existing functionality to still work, but it looks like something broke along the way.
I do hope the problem can be resolved as jumping through hoops to get software working is the kind of thing that is economically unproductive. I hope the information I have provided here helps someone else out in the same predicament and maybe even help Acronis programmers to help reproduce the problem and maybe even fix it in an update.
ta ta for now
KB1972
Based on the experiences reported on this forum, two general rules seem to apply when working with the ThinkPad.
1. Do any clone or disk or partition restore when booted from the TrueImage Bootable Media Rescue CD.
2. Insert the blank target disk into the Thinkpad before doing the clone or restoring a backup image. If cloning, this is often referred to as a reverse clone.
Due to the IBM special head geometry, if the blank target disk is placed in a external or usb enclosure before cloning or restoring, the new drive will not boot when placed inside the computer afterwards. Likewise, if performing a backup of the old disk, the old disk must be inside the Thinkpad when creating the backup..
If you repeat your tests with the changes indicated above, there is a good chance you would enjoy the same successful results as has been reported here in the past. The key being use the TI Recovery CD and put the target inside the computer before doing the restore or clone. If moving to a larger disk, then some partition sizes will need to be adjusted during the process. When creating the new disk, it is desirable to use the "Recover disk signature" during the restoring of a backup.
Discussion of IBM disk geometry
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=182787
GroverH, Thank you for your infomative reply. It certainly seems to make sense. At the time, I did take a cursory glance at the mbr using ADD disk editor but not really knowing what to look for, didn't pursue that avenue any further.
I'll bear in mind for future use. Given the explanation, it sounds like Acronis would have to know how the target machine BIOS is going to present the drive geometry to account for this, which does sound like a tall order. It's a shame there's not single standard that all motherboard manufacturers can adhere to.