Can't select What to Back up when using Disc Image Backup
After using ATIH 2012 to back up New Folder, with three items in it, from my desktop to my external hard drive, I shut down and then rebooted with my Recovery disk in the optical drive. It booted normally but I wondered how I could know if it would have booted from the optical drive if the hard disk was disabled. When it was fully booted up, I opened Acronis TIH 2012 and selected the backup I had just made and clicked Recover. It showed the backup I had just made as well as others that are on this external drive and I selected the one I had just made. A box appearred with the file to recover at the top and a lower panel apparently to choose where to recover to. I used the lower panel to click down from computer to desktop, which is where the New Folder started from and I wanted to return it to. Then I clicked Recover Now and it appeared to execute a recovery. At the end of the process, a message said that recovery was successful. However, New Folder with its 3 items was nowhere to be found on the desktop, which I believed I had selected as the recovery point. I am puzzling over this.
In the step where you say the computer booted normally, that is not what we want. We want the computer to boot to the CD/DVD recovery disk instead of the hard disk in the computer. Using the information provided to you by Sony, you should be able to boot the computer up using the CD/DVD your created. It will not boot into Windows, but into a Linux based recovery environment that ONLY has Acronis True Image Home running. You will need to be able to boot to the CD/DVD drive in order to be able to perform a recovery/restore if the hard disk is replaced or if you have problems with your system and wish to recover/restore from a backup you created previously from within Windows. It looks like your computer skipped over booting to the CD/DVD drive, and continued to boot from the internal hard disk drive. This is related to the boot order setup in you system, and your settings may still not be correct for this to take place.
As fas as the restore that you actually performed, the folder and files that you restored to your "desktop" may have been restored to the wrong folder labeled "desktop". Try searching for the files that you had in the folder created on your desktop previously to doing the backup, and see if you can locate where they may have been restored to.
You must really try and figure out how to get your system to be able to boot to a CD/DVD instead of the hard disk to be able to verify if the Recovery Disk can successfully see your system's hard disk drive and be able to restore from/to them.
You might also want to try creating a USB flash drive Recovery Disk, and testing that as another option.
With my external hard drive connected to the computer, I tried to simulate a failure situation by putting my Recovery disk into the optical drive an instant after pressing the power button (it won't go in before then). The computer booted up normally but I had no way of knowing if it booted from the optical drive, which is what I hope it did. When it was fully booted up, I opened Acronis TIH 2012, selected the backup file I had created on the desktop and had backed up to my external hard drive, and clicked on 'Recovery.' This brought up a box with the file name I had selected at the top and in a panel below it a means (I think, though it is not labeled in any way) of selecting where the file was originally created and I did so. What I wanted to do was recover the file to the desktop where it had come from but in a different folder. For that purpose, I had deleted the original folder from the desktop and made a new folder which I labeled 'Place 1.' I pressed 'Recover' and a place-to-recover-to box appeared. I chose to browse for the location and selected the 'Place 1' folder on the desktop. A recovery box appeared showing the file to be recovered and the 'Place 1' folder on the desktop to recover to. I clicked `Recover now' and the recovery process took place. I then looked in the 'Place 1' folder on the desktop and the three items in the original file had been recovered succesfully. Assuming that the computer had booted from the Recovery disk in the optical drive, this showed that recovery in a real situation would have been successful and gave me the feeling that I could accomplish it. /p>
Well, it's good to see that the recovery in Windows went smoothly. In order to boot to the CD, you would need to insert it into your CD drive while the system is powered up, and in Windows, then shutdown your computer normally. Power the computer up with the CD already in the drive to boot to the CD. You must to have the CD in the computer before turning it on.
James F's latest message pointed out that I was not really booted from my Recovery disk when I did my experimental recovery. I had not realized that only Acronis is loaded when the boot is truly from the Recovery disk. Knowing this I rechecked the boot priorities in BIOS and found that mine was indeed set for the internal optical drive to have first priority. I then put the Recovery dsik in the internal optical drive before shutting down. Then I powered on and got a screen I had not seen before. Looks like this:
Starting Acronis UEFI loader
1. Acronis True Image Home
c. continue booting
I first pressed 1. After the hard drive had exercised a bit, this message appeared:
'Run time exception; Failed to detect graphic output mode; code 21495812; tag 0X089328c5c20a9047'
It stays on the screen for maybe 20 seconds so it has to be revisited several times to copy it, then reverts to the previous screen.
I pressed 'c' and it went through a cycle and back to the same screen. In fact I couldn't get out of this screen even by trying to power off. It will not power off from this screen. I took out the Recovery disk and the computer then booted automatically from the hard drive.
Believing I had seen what should happen when booting from a Recovery disk, even though it didn't happen successfully, I then powered off and tried to insert the Recovery disk in the optical drive quickly enough to get the boot from the optical drive. I tied this enough times (with times well under a second) that I believe it can't be done. In a true emergency the boot from the Recovery disk will have to come from elsewhere. Two questions remain for me. With the proper boot priority setting in BIOS, could the boot come from a Recovery file on my external hard drive, which is connected to the computer before powering on? What does that Acronis boot error code I saw mean and how can it be resolved?
Harold, you did, in fact, get your system to boot your from the CD when placed into the system before shutting down. But, there is a problem with the recovery media (CD) application not starting correctly on your computer. If you can create a recovery USB flash disk instead of a CD from the Acronis True Image Home program Rescue Media Builder,as you did for the CD, (just choose a USB flash drive instead), and then try to boot to the flash drive just as you did the CD, by putting the flash drive in the computer before turning it on, you may be able to get into the Acronis recovery environment from the USB flash drive.
I have seem this problem with the bootable CD you created on some newer systems that have UEFI based BIOS, such as yours, and using a USB flash drive seems to work when the CD will not.
Hopefully someone from Acronis will read this post, and see the issue you have described concerning the UEFI boot problems from the recovery CD, as it seems to be becoming more of an issue now with newer computer hardware.
Life is complex. I just Chatted with a tech support person at Acronis and was given the attached steps for dealing with the error message I received while trying to boot my Sony 'S' series computer from an Acronis Recovery media. I will now try this out and see if it leads to more complexity or directly to a Recovery boot.
I also asked the Acronis tech support person if the boot could be done from an extenal hard drive. No. From a flash drive. Yes.
Unhappily, the Acronis steps to overcome the error I encountered in booting from an Acronis Recovery media did not solve the problem. If you read the attachment to my post 32 you see they say to press the F11 key when you get the error message. That does shut the previous screen and takes you to the VAIO start up screen, but after a half minute of that you are returned to where you came from. You are supposed to go to a screen where you have a choice of graphic modes at that point, but none appeared. I'll have to contact Acronis again. James F pointed out that Acronis may not be cognizant of the newest Sony computers. I hadn't realized it but my new Sony computer may be a very new model. A clue to this is that I am having trouble registering an extended warranty because they tell me "there is no such VAIO model number."
It looks like the Linux based recovery disk is booting up okay and taking you to the selection screen. When you see the selection screen where you have the following on your screen:
Starting Acronis UEFI loader
1. Acronis True Image Home
c. continue booting
Try pressing F11 at that point to see if you can enter the command he suggested. Then continue with the instructions given by support to get the Acronis True Image Home recovery environment started.
Will stay tuned for your updates.....
Chatted again with Aronis support and received new advice. For my computer I was told that the Recovery disc provided for in ATIH 2012 is not the one that needs to be used and they believe that is why I was receiving an error message when I tried to boot into the Acronis recovery environment using a disk made from the 2012 program. I was given a free download of a Linux based ISO file that they believe is the right one. It should be noted that this file can not be burned to media by the Windows Disc Burning utility. I am going to have to find another burner program to handle this Linux ISO file. I also asked if it could be put on a flash drive and used to boot my computer in case of a hard disk failure, since the optical drive would not be available in that circumstance. The answer was yes. If this is the right file, I will feel I now have made necessary preparations and have the necessary information to recover my computer and all of its files from any foreseeable situation, which is what I have been striving for. With an Acronis disk image and an Acronis full data backup on my external hard drive, both updated periodically, and a flash drive with the Recovery boot program on it, I think I will be able to put aside worries about computer failures and turn to using the computer. After learning what needs to be learned, backing up my computer and having assurance that I can recover from mishaps no longer seems so intimidating, but before I had been through this, it seemed almost insurmountable, and I'll guess that it is discouraging to many who atempt it. I think those who attempt it will be very fortunate if they find their way into these forums.
Harold,
You still need to create a CD from the ISO file. Even though it is a Linux based ISO file, it can still be used to create the CD. To do so in Windows, insert a blank, writable CD into your CD drive, locate the ISO file, then right-click on the ISO filename. A menu will appear and should have an option called Windows Disk Image Burner. If you don't see that in the menu, look on the same menu for Open With, and select that to find the Windows Disk Image Burner. Select the Windows Disk Image Burner, and then create the CD. Be sure to turn verification "on". This must be done to have bootable media for you to be able to recover/restore your system if you are unable to boot into Windows from your hard disk, or you wish to change it out for a larger one in the future.. Until you can successfully boot your computer to the CD and start the Acronis Recovery environment, you will not know if you can use it to restore/recover. Once you create a CD from this ISO file, test it, as we have been discussing in our previous posts. Also, you can not copy the ISO file directly to a USB flash drive and boot from the flash drive with the ISO file on it.
James,
Unless I misunderstood the Acronis tech support person, the boot file can and should be put on a USB flash drive, which is one of only two means for my computer to boot into the Acronis recovery environment if the hard drive (C:) fails. The other would be a CD that would have to be run on an external CD/DVD drive connected to a USB port. I am planning to put it on a CD disk but just for test purposes. For protection against future failure of the hard drive, I now plan to use a flash drive to boot from. I have to use a different burner than the Windows burner according to the tech support person. I am ignorant of how to make a downloaded ISO file go to the burner of choice. It went right into the Windows burner when I downloaded it where it failed to burn to a CD disk, which the tech person said was because the Windows burner will not work with this file.
Harold
I sent you a private message. Please check it. An ISO file is NOT a boot file, it is an image file of a CD/DVD and is used to create a CD/DVD by using the appropriate software to burn the image of the CD/DVD, not the ISO file, to the CD/DVD. Even if you copy the ISO file to your USB flash drive it will do you no good, as it WILL NOT be bootable. The statement from support that you would need an external CD/DVD USB drive to boot your system into the Recovery environment from CD is advice that I don't agree with. Unless Acronis support has tested with a Sony Vaio S series laptop and found this to the only method, I believe you should still be able to use your internal CD drive to boot the the recovery disk, just as you had tried to before. You just need to create the new CD from the ISO they sent you and try booting to it as per our previous discussions. If the ISO they sent you is the Linux based recovery disk image, you will not be able to just copy the files from the CD you create to a flash drive and then boot to the flash drive. The flash drive will not be bootable.
After you create the new CD, and try to boot to it using your internal CD drive, please update us on your progress.
While a Recovery CD in the internal optical drive with the proper boot code on it will boot my computer, this method at this point seems unavailable in the case of a failure of the hard drive UNLESS the CD happens to be in the optical drive at the time of failure, an unlikely circumstance in my case. My computer seems to ignore the optical drive even though it is set at top booting priority in BIOS if the disk is inserted AFTER power is turned on, no matter how quickly it is inserted after power is on. Yet I have no way of knowing what would happen if the hard drive was totally inoperable. Mybe then it would boot from the optical drive even if the CD were inserted after power was turned on. That would be the most convenient way for me to handle it but how can I be sure in advance of a total hard drive failure that it would work?
Support didn't say that an external CD/DVD drive was the only alternative. I was wrong if I gave that impression. They indicated that a flash drive would work as well, which would seem handier to me. Of course, I haven't tried any of these yet and won't be able to complete a boot from anything but the hard drive until I get code that will overcome the problem I have run into with graphic mode outpiut and can put that code on a bootable media. My next step is to find a burner to put the code that Support has given me on a Recovery CD and try then to boot from it. I will certainly keep describing what happens as I go along.
Harold,
Here is a link to a post in the 2012 forum. http://forum.acronis.com/forum/33773#comment-104485.
Please take a look, and post any further comments in that one, as it is the correct forum for 2012.
To James F,
Okay. Thanks.
I also have a new Sony Vaio S-series (SVS model) and encountered the same error
ERROR: "Run time exception; Failed to detect graphic output mode; code 21495812"
To Harold and anyone else experiencing this problem, here is a solution:
Booting directly from the boot disk made from Acronis True Image Home 2012 caused me to get the error.
Booting from an .iso image that was obtained from Acronis support caused me to get the same error.
The problem is that the error occurs during the boot up of the recovery disk, before you are given any options as to using Acronis, or generating a report.
SOLUTION: I solved the problem by using a free program called YUMI (in Google, search yumi multiboot), which creates boot-up images on a flash drive. I used YUMI to place the Acronis .iso image on the flash drive. I then rebooted my computer, YUMI showed the boot-up options, one of which is the Acronis .iso. I selected the ISO and I was able to run Acronis in recovery mode!!
So, the problem you are having with the error "Failed to detect graphic output mode" on new Sony Vaio laptops is in the boot-up loader, not in the Acronis recovery program.
I hope this helps as I was going crazy with this problem myself.